Yosaku

Yosaku (also known as Yosaku To Donbee), was an old Japanese black and white arcade game. Released in 1979?, Yosaku had a very similar look to Space Invaders, very similar. As a matter of fact, if you opened up a Yosaku machine you would find what was basically a set of Space Invaders boards, with a "Yosaku" sticker on them. The boards were nearly identical to normal Space Invaders boards, but some of the ROMs had different programming on them.

In Yosaku you play a little farmer guy, who is attempting to shoot down the crows out of his tree. Gameplay is identical to that of Space Invaders. A large bird replaces the UFO that goes over the top of the screen from time to time. While a lumberjack will chop out a section of the tree every time the birds reach the side of the screen (lowering them closer to the bottom). The only real gameplay difference is that the birds come in a pyramid pattern, as opposed to the rectangle pattern of Space Invaders. This serves to make the game much easier.

This game has been incorrectly attributed to Atari in the past. It has recently come to light that it was actually SNK who was responsible for this title. Functioning models of this game are very rare, as the boardsets were often converted to Space Invaders boards with a simple ROM chip swap. These games appear to have been shipped in generic cocktail table format, without much in the way of artwork.

You can play this title in either the MAME or Laser emulators, although neither one gets the sound right. Both emulators are also missing the color overlays that served the function of actually making the game look a bit different from Space Invaders.