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Yes, Yo! Noid, AKA Masked Ninja Hanamaru, AKA what happened when Capcom licensed the
floaty, notoriously-sloppy Wagyan Land engine from Now Production, AKA the terrifying wrath
of the Domino’s Pizza empire. Donated to the show by Friend Andy in PA, it’s the
rather absurd low point of Capcom’s renowned NES stable. New York City is being terrorized
by... um, something... and it’s up to this yo-yo - and his yo-yo - to help out the MAYER.
Honestly. They didn’t even spell “Mayor” correctly. David Margulies would be LIVID.
Anyway, it’s an action-thin platforming romp, where your greatest opponent is the
physics of the game itself. But there’s pizza!
Showing its Wagyan Land heritage, the concept of “boss battles” is replaced with “strange
puzzle-like substance,” which in this case does not, thankfully, resort to word puzzles
in Japanese. Instead, you’ve got... pizza-eating contests. You have 16 cards, each showing
a number of boxes of pizza, your opponent chooses a card, and you have to beat his to
add to your prestige as New York City’s #1 glutton. Through your travels in each stage,
you can find special power-ups to use in these boss battles, such as multipliers and the
dreaded RED PEPPER, which causes your opponent’s card to be completely negated. A little less
climactic than a series of Ninja battles, it’s true, but certainly unique. It caps
off platforming hell full of cheesy jumps, questionable physics, dicey collision detection,
and... skateboarding. Which is its own brand of hell. In this localization, the various
ninja-flavored enemies have been replaced by generic deranged New Yorkers and sports
players that Americans like, like airborne Vikings linemen, or hockey-playing polar bears,
or... this dude pitching curling stones at you. Because curling. You’ve either gotta
yo-yo them to death or use the ninjutsu you find scattered throughout each stage... which
aren’t animated at all, nor do they seem to make any sense. It’s PIZZA MAGIC!
Sure, there are good games based on corporate tie-ins. This isn’t one of ‘em. What it
is, though, is a hilarious look back on a time when, apparently, a game like Masked
Ninja Hanamaru wasn’t considered feasible in the US market, and had to be mangled for
its own good. It’s a fascinating cultural moment, when some claymation ephemera dreamed
up by Corporate to move some pizzas and star in a few commercials could worm his way into
a Capcom title, and stand alongside Darkwing Duck, Mega Man, Scrooge McDuck, five more
Mega Mans, Gun.Smoke, and of course, Little Nemo. So, we didn’t get that dude from The
ALFEE. And to think: There was a span of eight years where this was the best video game set
in New York City, unless you count the last third of Die Hard Trilogy or the first fourth
of Zombie Nation. It took Parasite Eve to put us right.