Video games - Avoid the Noid

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	Video games - Avoid the Noid

Avoid the Noid is a platform computer game for the Commodore 64 and DOS operating system, written in 1989 to promote Domino's Pizza. It was modeled after the company's ad campaign during the late 1980's and early 1990's. The ads featured a "noid" that destroyed pizzas and must be avoided.

The Commodore 64 version was developed by BlueSky Software and ShareData was the publisher for both versions. In the game, you must deliver a pizza to Doom Industries on the top floor of an apartment building while avoiding the Noid creatures and their traps as you go.

The protagonist pizza delivery boy can walk, run, roll and perform impressive somersaulting leaps. He is armed with a limited amount of Noid Avoiders, which when activated remove all Noids from the screen. Each screen consists of three floors; the player runs right on the first, takes the elevator up to the second, runs left, takes the elevator up to the third, and runs right once more. Hidden trapdoors are plentiful, dropping the player down to the next lower floor.

Within the elevators, the player is safe - but Noids often run out of them and attempt to knock the player down in the corridors. If not avoided by jumping or rolling, the protagonist is stunned and the Noid will then proceed to destroy the pizza. When all pizzas are gone the game ends. Later rooms include heat-seeking (i.e. pizza-seeking) missiles being fired from the doors, as well as Noids wielding bazookas. After losing a life, the player is treated to a close-up of a sneering Noid.

Several elevators are locked, requiring the player to find keys. These are hidden in the coin return slot of the various phones that hang on the wall. Certain other phones contain a digit, three of which are required for a digital lock near the top floor. However, the player must listen carefully to the phone ringing; searching a wrong phone causes a Noid (on the other end of the line) to blow up the phone, destroying your pizza once more. Ironically, one of the topmost phones in the building contains two bonus pizzas.

Finally, to open the door to the penthouse where the pizza is to be delivered, the player must visit the roof to obtain three more keys. Noids come by in planes and drop water balloons (with impressive splash damage); needless to say, water ruins your pizza.

Trivia

The advertising campaign featuring the Noid (an animation by Will Vinton Studios) allegedly caused Georgia man Kenneth Noid to hold hostage two employees of the Domino's chain for five hours. Noid was charged with kidnapping, aggravated assault, extortion and possession of a firearm during a crime.

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