Bank Panic

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Bank Panic was one of my favorite arcade games of the 80s and West Bank was exactly the successful clone we always wanted for our 8bit home computers. You're an Old West sheriff who must protect a bank and its customers from masked robbers. The layout of the bank is implicitly a circle with twelve numbered doors. You can rotate to the left or right and view three doors at a time. The doors will open to reveal a customer (who will drop a bag of money, making a deposit), a robber (who will attempt to shoot the player) or a young boy (who will be holding a stack of three to five hats, which you can rapidly shoot for a bag of money or bonus time). The level ends when all twelve doors have received one or more deposits. Note that at random intervals, a bomb will be placed on one of the doors and a rapid timer will count down from 99. You must move to that door and destroy the bomb with gunfire! But you should be more careful as shooting a customer, being shot by a robber, failing to destroy a bomb or failing to complete the level before the overall timer (shown by a bar at the bottom of the screen) loses one life. Although robbers can be shot on sight (such a kill is judged -UNFAIR- but carries no penalty), greater points can be earned by waiting until they begin to draw their weapons.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The Amstrad CPC version is slightly different in graphics when compared to the other 8bit but most of the original design of the Bank's interior is present and differs only in some details. The character animation is poor though (limited to 1-2 frames each) but it does make the job and it's enough for the game's specific gameplay style. The sound is acceptable, having a nice Western-style tune while the sound effects are typical, including gunshots and door opening sounds only.