Money Idol Exchanger in pico8

This is a game I made for practice and fun. It's inspired by Money Idol Exchanger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_Idol_Exchanger), an arcade game that was quite popular in the late 90s and early 2000. 

The game pacing is even faster than normal arcade games. If you simply enjoy quickly, heavily and repeatedly smashing some buttons, this is the right game for you. On the other hand, this is a puzzle game like Tetris, making it not just a no-brainer keyboard destroyer. The balance between physical and mental effort is the charm.

 It's kinda a shame that many arcades, like Money Idol Exchanger, didn't make it to our current generation (well, I guess you can still find them in Arcade Archives). That's why I made this, so that for those who likes it , the good old game will be remembered (hopefully).

--3almon

--------Instructions--------

z - take coins

x - throw coins

up - brake (by clearing the level gauge)

down - accelerate (by increasing level gauge by 50)

left, right - move

The coins will continuously spawn from the top, and if a coin ever goes beyond the bottom of the screen, you lose.

You can move around, take a single type of coins and throw them back (i.e. If you current hold one type of coins, you cannot take coins of a different type)

If more than three coins of the same type adjoin each other (like a match-three game), they are removed and a new coin will spawn. Spawning a new coin follows the following pattern (e.g. 4 red coins -> 1 orange coin):

Red(1) -> Orange(2) -> Yellow(3) -> Green(4) -> Blue(5) -> Red(1) -> .....