Capcom agreed to take one of their Japan-exclusive games, Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru, and twist it up until it became a vehicle for the Domino's mascot, the Noid. And in 1990, even Domino's Pizza wanted to reach their greasy pepperoni-soaked hand into the video game industry. They all had "advergames", games designed to indirectly promote a product or service. It was also a time when a ton of video games based on food franchises were released. You remember the 90s, right? Neon shorts, Ace of Base, two Goofy movies. (Forgive me, I couldn't think of another way to end this.I sat down and legitimately tried to play Yo! Noid, and the only thing I can really say about my experience is "Ugh." So what are you waiting for? Don't avoid this Noid: It's way less greasy than a Dominos pizza. And best of all, for a somewhat uncommon game Yo! Noid comes pretty cheap: on eBay right now there's a bunch of loose carts available for about $10. Once you get your head around the boss mechanics, the need to explore the stages and the sort of platforming you need to do after Stage 2, you're set. The only real knock on it is the difficulty curve: Stage 2 (with the furious hockey-playing polar bears) throws you in the deep end out of nowhere, with moving and self-destructing blocks of ice over long stretches of bottomless pits, and then the game sort of sticks to one difficulty until you see the Stage 13 flower pots. So having finally seen the whole game, do I recommend it? Definitely! The license is ridiculous but the controls are tight, the graphics are bright and expressive, the music is actually better than you'd think (I've got a soft spot for the map screen chime and as much as I hated Stage 13, the music for that level is pretty bad ass) and the gameplay has enough variety to keep anyone entertained. If the other guy eats his fill first, the Noid dies and has to do the stage again. The goal is to match up the cards so that the Noid fills his pizza-eating quota before his rival and advance to the next stage. Green is the last one, but they're all interchangeable and, not that this will come as any surprise, entirely unrelated to the commercials.) Cards each show a value of one to six pizzas, although the Noid can collect a few extra cards like x2 and x3 multipliers, and pepper and red pepper (I think it's hot sauce) to even the odds. (Wikipedia says Yo! Noid was made on the Wagan Land engine, and this part makes that seem believable.) Every two stages or so, the Noid faces off against an identical Noid of a different colour. Where things change is the boss battles, which are played out via card games. (The scrolls and their abilities basically make no sense for a pizza-eating jackass from New York, but when you realize it's a ninja game it makes a lot of sense.) There are a few non-standard stages: the auto-scrolling circus stage, two stages where the Noid has some jet-pack thing and a skateboarding level (which despite the early '90s RAD EXTREME esthetic to this game, appears to be original to the Japanese version.) And so the villain of some corny commercials was now a platforming hero.Īs a platformer Yo! Noid is serviceable but largely unremarkable: you use a yo-yo as a weapon, have a hearty jump and have special weapons that require you to collect scrolls as ammunition. But! Before that happened Capcom and Dominos got together to try to sell you pizzas via your NES, Konami long having since dropped the gauntlet with the relentless Pizza Hut ads in TMNT 2: The Arcade Game.
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