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PlayStation Basement #50 - No One Can Stop Mr. Domino!

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on August 10th, 2019.

Hello, and welcome to PlayStation Basement! PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of an odd or obscure game for the original PlayStation. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral. Now, let’s go!


This week I have a game I’ve been meaning to play and review for around a month now. Our long moving process really pushed this back, though. This week, it’s another Artdink game, No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! This game was released in 1998 in Japan (January), Europe (September), and North America (October) published by Artdink, JVC Digital Studios, and Acclaim respectively. It’s an action-puzzler runner, a genre that was a thing in Japan around this time with other games like Pepsiman and Oh No! How will this domino fall?




Each region has its own unique cover art for No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! Japan had Mr. Domino running with a motion blur on a deep blue background. The title logo was creatively rendered with domino characters. North America had a pre-rendered graphics style with Mr. Domino leaping in front of a brightly colored carnival and a messy, playroom logo. The European version has the best cover in my opinion. I love the futuristic, Jet Set Radio look of the text, the glowing green background, and Mr. Domino himself. All of these covers do a good job of representing the game in different ways.


No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! looks pretty nice. The graphics have a cartoony style that works well within the limitations of the PlayStation. The various stages of supermarkets and casinos and the like pop with small details, and the different effects that occur from solving the puzzles are charming. All of the domino characters are cute too. It’s a very charming game.


The sound is good in this game as well. The music is bright and poppy. It has a city pop feel that reminds me, appropriately, of Notamof Wind. The sound effects are similarly cheery and springy like something in a Kirby game. Again, No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! is very charming.


The gameplay in No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! is very unusual as you might expect. In a similarly old-fashioned style of Aquanaut’s Holiday and Notam of Wind, No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! is about dominos. You can select between several characters with different attributes, and you must place dominos on a stage to cause various background objects to fall. These objects will often block your path part of the way after falling. There are also other characters and obstacles that will get in your way; time is your ultimate obstacle. You can use the falling objects from cleared puzzles to create long domino chains if you are quite skilled. You only have so many dominos to use in a level though.

To sum it all up, your character runs around a short racetrack-style course. You place dominos over small switches. You run the lap again and knock down the first domino, hopefully causing a chain to knock down all of the others. If you don’t knock them all down, you can always get the others individually, but remember that you have to do one pass to place dominos and one pass to knock them down. Though it can be a little difficult at times, the shortness of the game and the ability to save your progress reduce frustrations quite a bit. One thing about this game does complicate things, however.


No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! is not particularly well explained in the manual or in the game. This isn’t the end of the world thanks to other internet reviews and YouTube videos, but I’m sure it caused some problems back in 1998. I had some trouble understanding chains and placing dominos due to the rough instructions. I was trying to press the button when I needed to hold it down, and I didn’t know how chains worked at all. If you try this one out, I suggest doing a bit more research than you might expect to do at first.

Overall, No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! is a fun game. Though it’s short, the stages will require a few run-throughs to get correct, so it’s not like there’s no content here. Plus, the game is all about trying different characters and getting a high score, so it has that classic arcade feel. I didn’t get very far in my first try, but I’m very drawn to keep playing No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! It makes me want to keep going and going, and that’s one of the most positive things I can say about any game.

No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! receives a Good.


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Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA

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