Yo! Noid (NES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Capcom’s 1990 license-based action game for the NES, Yo! Noid. This video shows two separate runs through the game. The first shows each level played in its entirety. The second, beginning at 40:52, shows the mini-game warp zones. Capcom’s Yo! Noid stars the Noid, Domino’s Pizza’s crimson bunny-eared mascot used in their popular ad campaign in the late 1980s, whose mission was to ruin customers’ pizzas before they could be delivered (in thirty minutes or less). The claymation miscreant made his first video game appearance in the 1989 computer game Avoid the Noid (), and Yo! Noid marked his second (and final) official appearance in a game, the following year. But this time, the Noid isn’t the villain. He’s the hero! His doppelganger, Mr. Green, has laid siege to New York City, and the Noid is the only one that can stop him. With his lethal yo-yo skills, the Noid must search the Big Apple for pizza-eating contests in order to challenge each of Green’s henchmen in the ultimate test of intestinal fortitude. Spanning a variety of NYC-inspired locales, this adventure’s fourteen stages are surprisingly diverse for an NES game. In addition to the garden variety side-scrolling platform stages, the Noid takes to the skies in a gyrocopter, braves the dangers of Central Park on a skateboard, and even gets a chance to crush his enemies while perched atop the “Pizza Crusher,” a pneumatic pogo stick with a giant anvil attached to the bottom. As he fights through waves of spear wielding fisherman, ice-skating polar bears, and Vegas-style Elvis impersonators, the Noid can collect scrolls that can be used to trigger special attacks (like blizzards and earthquakes) or to get better cards for the end of stage pizza eating contest battles, and many of these are only revealed when the Noid hits hidden spots in the background with his yo-yo. The pizza eating contests serve as Yo! Noid‘s boss battles and are, oddly enough, the only times in-game where pizza makes an appearance. Even then, the restaurant’s sign reads, “Pizza.“ The copyright info on the title screen is the only time the game references Domino’s itself. At each of these events, the Noid faces off against the area champion, and each round begins with your opponent selecting a card from his deck. If the Noid picks a higher number card, the difference will be added to his pizza gauge. If the Noid’s card is lower, the difference goes to his opponent. The items that can be picked up during the stages are often the deciding factor in these fights: the Noid can find cards that will double or triple the face value of his card, as well as items that ruin the pizza in case his opponent tries to eat it. These battles are fairly simplistic, but the special cards introduce a bit of strategy, and the format does a nice job of changing up the pace of the action. For an NES game, the impressively large and colorful graphics paint an attractive picture, and the enemy designs are often just as comically offbeat as the Noid himself. The music is upbeat and catchy, and the tight play control keeps things feeling fun and fair, though the game won’t likely pose much of a challenge for anyone who is already well-versed in 8-bit platformers. Yo! Noid is a well-made and thoroughly entertaining action game that’ll appeal to anyone with a sense of humor, however much the mascot dates it. Of interesting note, Yo! Noid wasn’t originally created for Capcom’s deal with Domino’s. It is an asset flip of Now Production’s Famicom game “Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru,“ which was released eight months ahead of its North American NES and PlayChoice-10 counterparts. _____________ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete () punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!