Masked Ninja Hanamaru (Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru):
The Famicom Yo! Noid

I would have never known about Hanamaru if it wasn't for stumbling upon some screen shots at a Famicom site. They immediately jumped out at me and under deeper investigation I found out Capcom had made the game.

The title screen and intro are really whacked out, but it was made by the king which is Capcom, so I decided to press start and try it out. When the first level sprang up, I almost fell out of my seat!

First Level: Harbor

"OH MY PRECIOUS NOIDS!", I remember shouting. This was Yo! Noid, minus a few pizza references, the replacement of the main character with a masked boy, and the yo-yo was now a bird. Even the enemies were strikingly similar and the play control was identical as well.

 

Masked Ninja Hanamaru	Yo! Noid

Everything looked like a clone. Take a look at the below screen shots of the levels. (The levels appeared in the same order as Yo! Noid, too.)

Second Level

Third Level

Fourth Level

Fifth Level

Sixth Level

Eighth Level

And now side by side comparisons between the two versions' sprites:

You should notice the "darker", more-sinister looking enemies from Hanamaru. The main character looks a tad shady, too, wearing those Elton John sun glasses.

The most surprising change, I found, was with Yo! Noid's pizza eating contests. Take a look.

The bosses here are a lot more creative than different colored Noids, I can tell you that much. These card battles are very much the same as the pizza eating contests. Items you picked up along the way (such as the II cards) can be used to your benefit. The goal is identical, to make your opponent's health go down to zero. The other real difference (beside the graphics) is the Japanese text. This might be the one of the pioneer video games of the card battle craze of today (Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh).

Still, after I played both games, I felt Yo! Noid put personality in an otherwise empty game. Even though both games are 98% the same, you will have a better time with Yo! Noid than Hanamaru just because of the fun characters.