The Electric Yo-Yo

The Electric Yo-Yo is an arcade game which was released by Taito America Corporation in 1982; it runs on an altered version of the company's Qix hardware previously used for Space Dungeon (two Motorola M6809s running at 1.25 MHz and a Motorola M6802 running at 921.6 KHz, with an added Motorola M68705 running at 1 MHz). The player must use a four-way joystick to take control for the eponymous "Electric Yo-Yo", which has to eliminate all the "Blox" for each round through the player pushing the joystick to make it shoot out its string in the appropriate direction and latch onto them - however, if the player pushes the joystick in a direction in which there are no "Blox" for the Yo-Yo to latch onto, it shall only move a short distance. The Yo-Yo also has to watch out for the small Bions, which move around the "Blox" and shall kill it on impact, and the triangular snake-like Trions, which will charge any "Blox" they touch unless a Bion is on them, in which case they will pick up the Bion, charge it and put it down on the next "Blox" they touch; a Trion can also pick up a Bion in an empty space as well as kill the Yo-Yo by touching it with its eyes. If the Yo-Yo should latch onto a charged "Blox", it will become charged itself for a short period of time (indicated by the Bions flashing) - and scoring is determined by the length of the Yo-Yo's string each time it shoots it out to a "Blox" (it can range from 10-500 points if the Yo-Yo is not charged and 20-1000 points if it is). When the Yo-Yo is charged the player will also receive 1000 points each time it passes over a flashing Bion, and each time it becomes charged the value of the "Bonus" counter at the top of the screen will be increased by 1; once the player clears the round, this value shall be multiplied by 1000 and awarded to them.