NES #11: Yo Noid!

At last a game that I actually have things to say about. I guess I'll come right out and say it. I think Yo Noid is a pretty good game. This game gets picked on all the time, but I'm not exactly sure why everybody hates it. I think it's one of the better licensed character games that Capcom made. I certainly like it better than Mickey Mousecapade or Adventures in the Magic Kingdom.

I guess it really just comes down to the main character. The Noid was a claymation character created by Oscar winner Will Vinton for Dominoes Pizza commercials. In other words he was created to sell a product. For some reason this really upsets gamers out there as if video games were a legitimate art that wasn't created to make money. I hate to break it to you guys, but every video game character was created to sell a product. For most of them that product is video games, but they are sill marketing tools. I honestly don't see how The Noid is any less entitled to star in a game than Mario. I mean, his face is on about a thousand awful shirts with stupid sayings on them. So seeing some college kid born in 1991 wearing a Mario shirt, perhaps with a picture of a mushroom with the phrase "the original magic mushroom" on it doesn't offend anybody, but having a pizza spokes character appear in a video game does? Some people really need to get some perspective on things.

So anyway, while I was thinking up this rant I was actually playing the game. As I said, it is pretty good. I was surprised by how hard it was, especially since I just went through it a couple of years ago. This was actually going to be the third game I wrote about, but because I was having such a hard time with it I put it aside for a while. There are really only a couple of things that annoy me about this game. They are the skateboarding and flying levels. For the most part I like how they tried to do different things with the levels, but they really could've worked a little bit harder on the collision detection. On the skateboard you can only kill things if you hit them with the back of your board while jumping. It can be hard to judge sometimes. This is only the third level, and I imagine it's where many people give up. The flying levels are tricky because you and your vehicle take up so much room on the screen. You fly the thing by tapping A, and this makes it really easy to run into things. The other levels are decent side scrolling platform levels with a pretty good amount of challenge. I enjoy the pizza contests in lieu of regular boss fights because they make you think a little bit. However, this does cause you to constantly use your yo-yo in the levels to find hidden powerups, but it doesn't get in the way that much. I really can't think of anything else to criticize in this game actually.

So what we have here is kind of an underrated game. Not exactly a masterpiece, but an enjoyable platformer. Most people stumbling upon this game today will probably have no idea who The Noid is, so the criticisms of old don't really apply. I'm surprised that this game was marketed to kids though, because it is really difficult. Although looking at the booklet it also describes Mega Man as a kids game and that one's damn near impossible without that pause cheat. Anyway, when I was a kid I did love this game, so maybe they know what they were talking about. And don't accuse me of being too sentimental about this one. There are plenty of games I played as a kid that I don't like now. I know Monser Party kinda sucks, and Rescue Rangers leaves a lot to be desired, but Yo Noid actually holds up pretty well, and I wish the people out there would give it a better chance. I just wish that pizza crusher showed up more than once. It sure looks cool on the box.