PrinceWatercress plays Bank Heist - Part 1 of 4

This maze game for the Atari 2600 takes some time to get used to, but once you do, this one can be fun.

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Bank Heist is a game for the Atari 2600 from 20th Century Games from 1983. In this game, you drive an orange jalopy through a maze and drive into banks in order to rob them. The joystick allows you to move your car while the fire button lets you drop dynamite out of your tailpipe. After you run into a bank to rob it for points (and money), a police car will spawn where the bank was and come after you. This is where the dynamite you drop with the fire button comes in. If the cop car is on the dynamite when it explodes, you'll get points (10, 30 or 50), and another bank will spawn so you can rob it.

As you go through the maze, you will go through your fuel. The fuel meter is on the upper-left corner, and as you rob banks, you'll get more fuel to refill with when you enter the next stage, which is indicated by a white line on the right side of the fuel gauge. To get a complete gas refill, you'll have to rob nine banks, and as you rob banks, you'll go from getting 10 points for the first one to 90 for the ninth bank and beyond.

There are two wrap-around paths at the center of the maze. Going left takes you to the previous city while going to the right . Switching cities will refill your gas based on how many banks you robbed, and if you have a full tank of gas when you do it, you'll get an extra life, too. The upper wrap-around path takes you to the next city, while the lower wrap-around path actually takes you to the other side of the maze instantly like in Pac-Man.

There are four mazes, or cities, each with their own specific color. When you go through a whole loop of cities, the cops will get faster and the game will become more difficult as a result.

When playing the game, be careful as to where you are at, and watch your fuel gauge. Hanging around in corners and dead ends with cops about is not a good idea. You don't want to go to another city with less than a full refill, which can be easy to inadvertently do. Also, don't stay near where a bank was after you robbed it, as a cop car can spawn right on top of you and kill you. Also, it is possible to run into your own dynamite trying to lure a car to it and blow yourself up. If you run out of fuel, you'll lose a life that way, too. When you lose all your lives, the game is over.

The left difficulty switch is the cop AI, while the right difficulty switch dictates whether the banks are spawned in a set or random order. B/Novice on the left switch means cops are not exactly smart as to where you are, while B/Novice on the right switch means banks will spawn in a set order every time (as opposed to a random one). In the next couple of videos, I'll be playing with the difficulty switches and seeing how the game plays with different difficulty settings.