Yo! Noid

aka: Kamen no Ninja: Hanamaru, Play Isle
Moby ID: 8636
NES Specs
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Description official description

The Noid, the mascot from Domino's Pizza commercials during the 1980s, is in trouble. There is another Noid named Mr. Green, running through New York City playing practical jokes and causing trouble, but everyone is blaming the Noid for these shenanigans. Now the Noid must clear his name and save the city by catching this impostor.

It is another 2D jump and run platform for NES, but with a strange idea and cartoonish and cheerful graphics. The weird character has to beat pizza delivery boys using a yo-yo.

Spellings

  • 仮面の忍者 花丸 - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Credits (NES version)

NOW PRODUCTION 1988

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 58% (based on 10 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.2 out of 5 (based on 22 ratings with 1 reviews)

Avoid The Noid!

The Good
Yo! Noid (1990) for the Nintendo Entertainment System has many of the earmarks of a great Capcom platformer, i.e. large cartoon-inspired graphics, creative music, nice sound effects, interesting weapons and locations. Sadly, the quality of the game quickly goes down hill, faster then stale pizza.

The Bad
Yo! Noid (1990) has a weak storyline that has the former pizza mascot saving New York City from his evil twin, Mr. Green, and his army of thugs and animals. The instruction manual does not add much to the storyline and, in point of fact, fails to explain why the Noid is collecting magical Japanese scrolls or even the rules for the card game you must complete at the end of each level. Granted, coming up with a good storyline based on a 1980's advertisement for Dominos Pizza is probably not the easiest job in the world. Yet, there is no excuse for the insane level of tedious difficulty in this game. The game features an instant death policy, which means that you will die often. Frequent death will also come about through a cruel timer, poor hit detection and sluggish controls. The obnoxious pizza mascot has a weak, short range yo-yo to dispense of his much stronger enemies. If you collect enough magical Japanese scrolls, you have limited use of a magic, which may or may not help you out.

The Bottom Line
Yo! Noid (1990) could have been another great platformer from the creative folks at Capcom. It is hard to believe that the company that gave us such 8-bit classic as "Ducktales", "Chip n' Dale", "Mega Man" and "Little Nemo" made so many obvious and fatal mistakes with the Noid. If you are fully prepared, even eager, for a long and frustratingly difficult platformer, then this game is for you. Otherwise, I would suggest that you avoid the Noid!

NES · by ETJB (428) · 2010

Trivia

Japanese version

This game was first released as 仮面の忍者 花丸 (Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru) which roughly translates into "The Masked Ninja Hanamaru". In this version of the game, you play as Hanamaru, a young masked ninja, who is sent to a children's theme park called Leisure Land, to investigate why all the children have disappeared. When he discovers that other ninjas have kidnapped the kids, Hanamaru sets out to rescue them.

Title

The primary title for this game is Yo! Noid because Capcom teamed up with the Domino's Pizza company to promote their mascot. When this game was originally released in Japan, the Noid was nowhere to be seen.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Mumm-Ra.

Arcade added by Michael Cassidy.

Additional contributors: Apogee IV, TarquinnFF3, Rik Hideto, firefang9212.

Game added March 14, 2003. Last modified September 8, 2023.