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.