Where and when did you first play this game?

I played Law of the West in the mid to late 1980’s with my best friend at the time, Tim.  He owned the Commodore 64 and had all the best stuff for that damn system.  There a few games for the C64 I remember really well, and Law of the West was one of them.  The first computer system I owned was the Commodore 128D so I could play games like Law of the West. 🙂

How many times have you played this game? Have you replayed the game since you first played it?

It’s been a long time since I’ve played this game.  I no longer own a C64 or a good emulator for my computer, so it’s been a while.

What is it about this game that you loved?

I loved insulting characters in this game!  Yes, there it is, I loved insulting the characters and playing it risky in the game.

You play the town sheriff of a small western town, Gold Gulch.  The sheriff stands in profile on the left hand side of the game screen, and you interact with thesee stereotypical western characters.  They come out and start by saying something to you, to which you’re presented with four different things to say:  one nice, one not so nice, and a couple other general comments.  Depending on the initial conversation starter, they respond, and you get a new set of follow up comment.  As the conversation progresses you can continue to insult or dial it back and play nice.  It’s really entertaining.

If you play the game nice you can talk with all the town folks, and the game will end peacefully.  If you go out, and you’re not do nice you can piss them off and bad things will happen to you.

The characters will return insults to you, but some times you can piss them off a lot.  They’ll pull a gun and shoot at you from their standing position.  The best is when they leave the screen and shoot at you from a distance, maybe out a windows or door.  If they start shooting, you can pull your gun and return fire.  Sometimes the characters are pretty fast, and you’ll get shot before you know what happened, but most of the time you can out draw them and shoot them first.

 

What is the best (or worst) moment in this game? Or what about this game made it memorable?

I think one of the funniest moments in this game is being mean to the doctor.  He come out and you can be a real prick to him, calling him a drunk and a womanizer, etc.  But if you’re mean to him, it does carry consequence, like when you get shot.  The doctor will normally save your life, but sometimes he’s drunk (maybe based on comments from you), or not in town.  In either case, you die, and the game ends.  When you’re really rude to the doctor, he will say something to the effect of “I’m not going to save his life, he’s an asshole” and you die.  I remember it being so terribly funny when I was eight or nine years old.  If you do survive, the sheriff will appear on the screen with a bandage around his upper arm.

A couple other funny moments were some of the adult related portions of the game.  You can talk with the local jezebel and ask her for a “good time” and she’ll invite you over to have a “drink” and by “drink” she means doing the nasty.  Also, there’s a little boy, who you can tease him by telling him what a lady of low moral fiber his mother is, and as I recall, even he’ll start shooting at you. All pretty funny.

Is there a special story about this game? Maybe an event in your life or some thing memorable you associate with this game?

There’s not any specific memory regarding this game, just that it was really funny at the time.

Links:

• Law of the West (video game) (Wikipedia)