Yo! 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!