If it was just the platforming levels, it would be rough (though at least occasionally interesting) but playing through a tough as nails level just to have the misfortune to be thrown into a semi-RNG card based pizza eating competition is truly masochistic. At least they don't happen after every single level. I dance on your mascot grave Noid!
This is a licensed nes game all right. Its fine and fun enough but the pizza eating contest are not fun at all and can get unfair by the end if you don't know where some of the collectibles are.
This game is not good, but I had to beat it as a child.
Genuinely so insane the reason why Dominos got rid of the Noid mascot. If you don't know, look it up
a second noid has hit the south tower
Yo! Noid released in March 1990 in Japan and November of the same year in NA, is a side scrolling platformer developed by Now Production and published by Capcom for the NES. Well, that's a lie. The game that was actually developed was called "Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru". Pretty much the same game then simply got a visual overhaul in "The Noid" style, The Noid being a Domino's Pizza mascot at the time.
So instead of the game being about a Ninja, it's actually about a Mascot stopping his evil twin to get some pizza as reward.
With that, let's talk about what Yo! Noid is about.
As established, you play as the Noid, a long-eared red rabbit-like creature that likes pizza a lot. He is equipped with a yo-yo and has to fight two obstacles. The first? Platforming through a variety of different levels like the icy and slippery second stage. Or how about the first stage, which takes place along a wharf. The land moves up and down and the water rises and falls, so the Noid has to avoid falling into the water when this happens. The second obstacle? A large variety of random enemies. In the first stage for example, you have to worry about flying birds, random humans and also fishes that jump out of the water. In later stages, there are bats, wasps, flying bullets, falling icicles and more.
The re-skinning of the Ninja game to fit the Noids "universe" falls awfully flat and while it may be a minor complaint, the stages just feel incosistent and random. In the first level, the humans that attack you are just random pink men with a harpune in hand. There is no meaning to the color they wear and their attack is simply walking into your character. In addition, it's a water level but you got both fish and bird attacking you. Why are the birds flying so low? I guess I'm looking for logic unnecessarily here and it probably is a weird complaint, but there isn't much else this game offers apart from world & level design, gameplay and its soundtrack.
The music in this game is typical 8 bit music, but it doesn't sound as catchy as I'm used to from other games. Plus, music is reused for two consecutive levels, even if they are thematically very different from each other, so there doesn't appear to be much thought given there.
Gameplay in this game I would describe with one word: Frustrating. The hit box of both the Noid and enemies is very inconsistent and simply stretches many inches away from the character models. Even though you jump above and past an enemy, the game sometimes still says you hit the enemy. You only have one life before a stage resets, so this exacerbates the frustration there. Sometimes, hit detection is really just completely random, especially in a skateboard level where you are meant to hit pigeons with the back of the wheel. The same hit two times can result in a kill or death seemingly at will of the game.
In stage 2, the ice level, the footing of the ice was also frustratingly inconsistent. You have to jump on a small, icy and slippery platform and most of the time, you would slip one way or the other and would have to try and adjust your footing before slipping off and falling to your death. However, sometimes you wouldn't slip at all and stand still. It really wasn't possible to tell which roll of the dice you would get. Not to mention that sometimes it would look like your character was slipping off, but it was actually a graphical glitch making it appear that way, and trying to adjust against the "phantom slip" would result in falling to one's death as well.
But later stages do kind of make up for the frustration of the earlier levels with the use of pogo sticks and even some levels where you are flying and have to avoid spikes in a level that is designed in a way that reminds be of Floppy Bird. But getting to these stages takes a high frustration tolerance for many hours and also is mired with what I have to call the "worst boss fights in video game history".
Or at least as far as I have experienced so far, the experience through 1990 and beyond should lead me to valleys far darker than what Yo! Noid has to offer. But this game will undoubtedly be a first ballet worst boss fights Hall of Famer if for nothing else. Because the boss fights in this game are ... PIZZA EATING CONTESTS.
After every odd numbered stage, you face your evil twin in a pizza eating contest. What does this entail? Both you and him have a deck of cards with numbers from 1-5. The evil twin, Mr. Green, makes the first selection at random, let's say 2. Then you can choose one of your cards. If you select 3, which is your highest numbered card in the earlier stages, then you win the round and get 1 point to your total. You need to get a specific amount of points before your opponent does to win the boss fight. There are also power up cards, so you can double your 3 to 6 and get 5 points to your total. That's literally it. These fights can take up to 2 minutes and throw you out of the action completely. They are boring and it's only a matter of time before you win, not a matter of skill, unless you think 2 is higher than 3, in which case you will lose. In Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru, you have to prove that your "Ninjutsu" is higher in what is essentially the same game, simply thematically different. But in both instances, boss fights suck.
I checked the Internet Archives to find reviews of this game in Magazines way back when and I found it listed in the "Video Games & Computer Entertainment issue of December 23rd, 1990". It's very positive about the game, maybe too positive, but even it denotes the boss fights as "the only area that's not fun for gamers of all ages". If you didn't play this back in the day and aren't wrapped in a nostalgia bubble for it, you likely will find that most areas of this game are not fun for gamers of all ages.
P.S.: Did you know that this game sold for $49.95 USD at release? No, seriously. We give gaming companies shit for their business practices these days, and rightfully so, but selling a re-skin of a game that you already made and one that has so little content for 50 bucks would surely cause a shit storm or two if a similar thing happened in the age of social media. I loved seeing this price because it made me appreciate how spoiled we are with incredible indie games going for barely half the price at release and offering a hundred times more. Is it weird to compare this random game from 1990 to indie games in 2022? Maybe. But maybe not.
To top it off: According to the VG&CE magazine, "the hilariously exaggerated look of concentration that replaces his buck-toothed grin" when The Noid whips out his yo-yo "is worth the price of admission". How liberating it must have been to have such low expectations that an animation is worth $50. I'll definitely take this positivity over "Starfield is unplayable if faces don't show 2% more emotion" any day though.
So instead of the game being about a Ninja, it's actually about a Mascot stopping his evil twin to get some pizza as reward.
With that, let's talk about what Yo! Noid is about.
As established, you play as the Noid, a long-eared red rabbit-like creature that likes pizza a lot. He is equipped with a yo-yo and has to fight two obstacles. The first? Platforming through a variety of different levels like the icy and slippery second stage. Or how about the first stage, which takes place along a wharf. The land moves up and down and the water rises and falls, so the Noid has to avoid falling into the water when this happens. The second obstacle? A large variety of random enemies. In the first stage for example, you have to worry about flying birds, random humans and also fishes that jump out of the water. In later stages, there are bats, wasps, flying bullets, falling icicles and more.
The re-skinning of the Ninja game to fit the Noids "universe" falls awfully flat and while it may be a minor complaint, the stages just feel incosistent and random. In the first level, the humans that attack you are just random pink men with a harpune in hand. There is no meaning to the color they wear and their attack is simply walking into your character. In addition, it's a water level but you got both fish and bird attacking you. Why are the birds flying so low? I guess I'm looking for logic unnecessarily here and it probably is a weird complaint, but there isn't much else this game offers apart from world & level design, gameplay and its soundtrack.
The music in this game is typical 8 bit music, but it doesn't sound as catchy as I'm used to from other games. Plus, music is reused for two consecutive levels, even if they are thematically very different from each other, so there doesn't appear to be much thought given there.
Gameplay in this game I would describe with one word: Frustrating. The hit box of both the Noid and enemies is very inconsistent and simply stretches many inches away from the character models. Even though you jump above and past an enemy, the game sometimes still says you hit the enemy. You only have one life before a stage resets, so this exacerbates the frustration there. Sometimes, hit detection is really just completely random, especially in a skateboard level where you are meant to hit pigeons with the back of the wheel. The same hit two times can result in a kill or death seemingly at will of the game.
In stage 2, the ice level, the footing of the ice was also frustratingly inconsistent. You have to jump on a small, icy and slippery platform and most of the time, you would slip one way or the other and would have to try and adjust your footing before slipping off and falling to your death. However, sometimes you wouldn't slip at all and stand still. It really wasn't possible to tell which roll of the dice you would get. Not to mention that sometimes it would look like your character was slipping off, but it was actually a graphical glitch making it appear that way, and trying to adjust against the "phantom slip" would result in falling to one's death as well.
But later stages do kind of make up for the frustration of the earlier levels with the use of pogo sticks and even some levels where you are flying and have to avoid spikes in a level that is designed in a way that reminds be of Floppy Bird. But getting to these stages takes a high frustration tolerance for many hours and also is mired with what I have to call the "worst boss fights in video game history".
Or at least as far as I have experienced so far, the experience through 1990 and beyond should lead me to valleys far darker than what Yo! Noid has to offer. But this game will undoubtedly be a first ballet worst boss fights Hall of Famer if for nothing else. Because the boss fights in this game are ... PIZZA EATING CONTESTS.
After every odd numbered stage, you face your evil twin in a pizza eating contest. What does this entail? Both you and him have a deck of cards with numbers from 1-5. The evil twin, Mr. Green, makes the first selection at random, let's say 2. Then you can choose one of your cards. If you select 3, which is your highest numbered card in the earlier stages, then you win the round and get 1 point to your total. You need to get a specific amount of points before your opponent does to win the boss fight. There are also power up cards, so you can double your 3 to 6 and get 5 points to your total. That's literally it. These fights can take up to 2 minutes and throw you out of the action completely. They are boring and it's only a matter of time before you win, not a matter of skill, unless you think 2 is higher than 3, in which case you will lose. In Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru, you have to prove that your "Ninjutsu" is higher in what is essentially the same game, simply thematically different. But in both instances, boss fights suck.
I checked the Internet Archives to find reviews of this game in Magazines way back when and I found it listed in the "Video Games & Computer Entertainment issue of December 23rd, 1990". It's very positive about the game, maybe too positive, but even it denotes the boss fights as "the only area that's not fun for gamers of all ages". If you didn't play this back in the day and aren't wrapped in a nostalgia bubble for it, you likely will find that most areas of this game are not fun for gamers of all ages.
P.S.: Did you know that this game sold for $49.95 USD at release? No, seriously. We give gaming companies shit for their business practices these days, and rightfully so, but selling a re-skin of a game that you already made and one that has so little content for 50 bucks would surely cause a shit storm or two if a similar thing happened in the age of social media. I loved seeing this price because it made me appreciate how spoiled we are with incredible indie games going for barely half the price at release and offering a hundred times more. Is it weird to compare this random game from 1990 to indie games in 2022? Maybe. But maybe not.
To top it off: According to the VG&CE magazine, "the hilariously exaggerated look of concentration that replaces his buck-toothed grin" when The Noid whips out his yo-yo "is worth the price of admission". How liberating it must have been to have such low expectations that an animation is worth $50. I'll definitely take this positivity over "Starfield is unplayable if faces don't show 2% more emotion" any day though.
Domino's Pizza is subpar at best but that's not why I'm pissed at them. I'm pissed because they never paid me for doing the fucking Noid ads in the 90s. I mean come on; no one can play The Noid like me I'm irreplaceable. They told me they weren't gonna pay me for playing that role because of "budget cuts" and I was just like "Whatever I quit then, there is no Noid without me" and guess what I was right.
Now where's my fucking money Dominos
(Oh yeah this game suck or whatever, idk man it's a licensed game on NES all of those games fucking suck.)
Now where's my fucking money Dominos
(Oh yeah this game suck or whatever, idk man it's a licensed game on NES all of those games fucking suck.)
On page 17 of the Yo! Noid manual they talk about the dangers of getting blackpilled again after losing those bullshit post-level pizza poker matches.
A surprisingly bad platformer given Capcom's record on the NES. The gameplay is frustrating, and the dead-eyed corporate pizza mascot didn't do the visual style any favors.
what a game
Uma pena que a franquia da Domino's Pizza foi embora da minha cidade.
For those of you that are unaware of who The Noid is (or maybe you just pushed him out of your mind, which I don't blame you for doing so), he was an old mascot for Domino's Pizza back in the 80's that they even recently brought back at one point. He is this weird-ass gremlin-man-bunny-thing who was known for ruining your pizzas, and for some reason, that was enough to create an iconic character, one that would get his own line of merchandise, including several video games. The most notable one would without a doubt be Yo! Noid, because it was the 90's, and apparently saying YO was cool.
As you would expect from most licensed games at the time, it was primarily meant to sell a product and nothing more, and from what we did get out of it, it actually isn't all that bad. I wouldn't necessarily say it is too good, or it has anything really noteworthy, but for a game based on this dumbass mascot from Domino's Pizza, it could have been a lot worse.
The story is simple and dumb, but I would expect nothing more from a game like this, the graphics are definitely graphics, with the Noid himself looking exactly like he should, the music is good enough, the control is thankfully average, and the gameplay is standard, being your typical 2D platformer where you use a yo-yo to kill people (because obvously), get power-ups and beat bosses, with some variety in how you traverse stages throughout the game. Thankfully, again, is pretty standard, and there is really nothing wrong with it, from what I played.
However, what made me ultimately made me quit this game altogether were the "boss fights". At the end of certain levels, you will encounter another Noid creature, and instead of fighting him, you have to engage in a pizza eating contest with him, where you have to eat more pizzas them him in a round, and eat a certain amount in order to win. It's simple and inventive, I'll give it that, but it not fun, and pretty frustrating.
It is automatically stacked against you from the start, and in order to even stand a chance at winning (at least in later rounds), you have to use items that you collect during the stages, which is fine, but most of the time, the items are invisible, so you won't know it is there until you just spam your yo-yo all over the place, and honestly, I don't have the patience to try to find that shit.
Overall, while it doesn't do too much to stand out, and the "boss fights" can be pretty annoying, it is still alright enough for a licensed game based on The Noid, and it doesn't hurt to give a try if you are morbidly curious. And at the end of the day, we can all at least agree on one thing... this game is at least better than anything Domino's serves.
Game #76
As you would expect from most licensed games at the time, it was primarily meant to sell a product and nothing more, and from what we did get out of it, it actually isn't all that bad. I wouldn't necessarily say it is too good, or it has anything really noteworthy, but for a game based on this dumbass mascot from Domino's Pizza, it could have been a lot worse.
The story is simple and dumb, but I would expect nothing more from a game like this, the graphics are definitely graphics, with the Noid himself looking exactly like he should, the music is good enough, the control is thankfully average, and the gameplay is standard, being your typical 2D platformer where you use a yo-yo to kill people (because obvously), get power-ups and beat bosses, with some variety in how you traverse stages throughout the game. Thankfully, again, is pretty standard, and there is really nothing wrong with it, from what I played.
However, what made me ultimately made me quit this game altogether were the "boss fights". At the end of certain levels, you will encounter another Noid creature, and instead of fighting him, you have to engage in a pizza eating contest with him, where you have to eat more pizzas them him in a round, and eat a certain amount in order to win. It's simple and inventive, I'll give it that, but it not fun, and pretty frustrating.
It is automatically stacked against you from the start, and in order to even stand a chance at winning (at least in later rounds), you have to use items that you collect during the stages, which is fine, but most of the time, the items are invisible, so you won't know it is there until you just spam your yo-yo all over the place, and honestly, I don't have the patience to try to find that shit.
Overall, while it doesn't do too much to stand out, and the "boss fights" can be pretty annoying, it is still alright enough for a licensed game based on The Noid, and it doesn't hurt to give a try if you are morbidly curious. And at the end of the day, we can all at least agree on one thing... this game is at least better than anything Domino's serves.
Game #76
Remember that one early 2010s sonic youtuber who had the Noid as a reocurring character for. Some reason and kept taking down videos making fun of him What the FUCK was that about
Yo Noid... Yo Noid? I guess just calling it The Noid didn't have enough pizzazz to it.
Fuck you Noid and all of your pizza destroying contraptions. what gives you the right to destroy the food made by dominos pizza? what the hell did they ever do to you? or try to target the great italian dish pizza. you outta be ashamed of yourself. All for what? to try and ruin dominos pizza? it’s a big fast food corporation! there’s no way you will ruin them just with a few ruined pizzas. no one will join your side. your attempts of sabatoge will be all for nothing in the end. You’ve wasted years of your life, dressed in a ugly stupid fucking suit, just to destroy mediocre pizzas. Fuck you noid.
I loved this game as a kid. I remember it being really hard and it can be if you don't know what your supposed to do. I remember the pizza challenge stages being hard but now I see they are just luck and how many things you found in the level. The platforming stages can be fun at least IMO but can't igore one hit deaths errg. Not winning any awards but it has a special place in my heart.