Yo! Noid
- Brand
- Domino's
- Year
- 1990
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- In-Game
- Agency
- Capcom
- Added
- October 2026
- 1
The cartridge boots to a title screen bearing the Domino's name, the only place in the product where the brand appears outright. An intro newscast shows Mr. Green, Noid's green double, leading a mob of creatures on a rampage through New York; the mayor summons Noid and promises a giant pizza as the reward driving the whole campaign.
- 2
Players run and jump through side-scrolling levels, attacking with a yo-yo projectile and adjusting jumps in mid-air to reach upper paths. One hit from any enemy is instant death, a level timer also costs a life if it runs out, and dying sends the player back to the level's start rather than a checkpoint; levels run about two minutes each.
- 3
Each stage swaps its hazards and movement for variety: swaying dock platforms over killer water and harpooners, cracking ice floes that force constant motion, skateboarding through Central Park, rooftop hopping past balloons, a pogo stick fending off plumbers, forced-scroll chase sections, a carnival level bounded by screen edges, a climb using a platform and spring, and two stretches riding an autogyro where the player can only hold altitude and dodge, not attack. Urban stages add graffiti, jumping trash cans, mailboxes that shoot snails, and enemies throwing flowerpots.
- 4
Along the way players knock down yo-yo scrolls for magic points, breaking the larger ones for a special attack or rare bonus; banking enough points triggers a screen-clearing special move. Hidden warps on some stages lead to an optional whack-a-mole bonus game, and every 20,000 points earned grants an extra life, the only way to gain more attempts.
- 5
After odd-numbered stages, a boss fight is replaced by a pizza-eating card duel: player and champion each reveal a card, the higher number wins, and the loser "eats" the point difference in pizzas. Bonus cards gathered in the levels modify the duel — a pepper zeroes the opponent's card, a doubler boosts the player's own card before it's played, and stacking doublers yields x3 cards; running the champion out of cards wins the duel outright, while losing restarts the stage with any already-collected bonus cards kept.
- 6
The final stage, N.Y.C. Skyline, ends with Noid confronting and defeating Mr. Green, unlocking an ending where the mayor delivers the promised pizza.
- 7
The game's real-world payoff sits in the instruction manual: a $1 coupon for a Domino's order, tying the purchase directly to a pizzeria visit. A 1991 arcade version for the PlayChoice-10 cabinet runs the same NES game on a pay-per-time basis.
Objective
Domino's wanted to keep its mischief-maker mascot, the Noid, in front of kids after years of "Avoid the Noid" TV spots — by 1990 the campaign had already moved 10 million pieces of Noid merchandise and the brand was relaunching him as a friendlier "Yo! Domino's" character. A full NES cartridge put him in front of the same 6-to-12-year-old audience for 14 levels of play instead of a 30-second commercial, and let Domino's collect royalties on every copy sold instead of paying for the media.
Solution
Yo! Noid is a side-scrolling platformer: you guide the Noid, in his red suit, running and jumping across 14 cartoon versions of New York — a pier, an ice rink, Central Park, rooftops, the Bronx, a carnival, even the open sky. You swing a yo-yo to knock out enemies, pick up scrolls that charge a magic attack, and on certain levels swap running for a skateboard, a pogo stick, or a gyrocopter. Instead of a boss fight, each stretch ends in a pizza-eating contest: a card-duel minigame against a rival eater where whoever loses has to finish the gap in pizza. Domino's branding stays in the background — its name on the title screen, a level called Pizza Crusher that nods to the brand's ads, pizza boxes in house colors — and the pitch to buy continues after the cartridge is turned off, with a $1 coupon printed on the back of the instruction manual.
Results
- 500K
- copies shipped to stores
Capcom shipped 500,000 copies of Yo! Noid to stores in fall 1990 at a $40 retail price, with Domino's collecting an undisclosed percentage of wholesale sales as a royalty.
Can you still play it?
Yo! Noid can't be played through any official channel today: it never had online servers, and no re-release exists on Nintendo Switch Online, in Capcom compilations, or on Domino's own site. It survives only on the original NES cartridge, still sold secondhand, through an in-browser emulated prototype and a preserved longplay on the Internet Archive, or via an unofficial 2017 fan sequel, Yo! Noid 2: Enter the Void. No closure date or reason is recorded; the cartridge simply fell out of production.
