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The Electric Yo-Yo
Don't take this personally, but you're a yo-yo in The Electric
Yo-Yo, trying to clear all the dots from the screen and trying just as
hard to avoid the bug-eyed monsters and other enemies who seem to be
natural predators of toys on strings. You must plan your movement around
the screen carefully - the further you can move in a straight line to
eliminate the most dots, the faster you'll move. Getting stuck in limbo
with no targets in the same horizontal or vertical space means you have to
take painfully slow baby steps around the screen, making you a sitting duck
(or a sitting yo-yo) for your adversaries. You can occasionally grab a
flashing dot to give you the power to knock the bug-eyed monster out of the
way momentarily. If you clear the screen of dots, a new pattern of dots
appears, each one more difficult to complete than the last.
(Taito, 1982)
 
Even two years after Pac-Man hit it big, just
about everyone was trying to carve out a slice of the dot-gobbling pie with
games that, if they weren't outright ripoffs, were at least
conceptually similar. Taito, normally associated with such
trail-blazingly original games as Qix and
Jungle Hunt, was no exception, but at
least The Electric Yo-Yo is far more original than the vast majority
of Pac-Man-inspired arcade games.
Still, that doesn't mean it's got galloping great replay value. And I'm not
even talking about putting quarter after quarter into it, but maintaining enough
interest to stay with one whole 25-cent game that you've paid for already.
The Electric Yo-Yo may have been unusual...but that doesn't always equate
to fun. This game wasn't everyone's cup of tea.
Rating: 
Two quarters - worth playing, but could use some more work.
Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster
 
 
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