| Mendel Palace | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Game Freak |
| Publisher(s) | Namco, Hudson Soft |
| Year released | 1989 |
| System(s) | NES, Wii U |
| Genre(s) | Action |
|---|---|
| Modes | Single player, Multiplayer |
Mendel Palace, originally released in Japan as Quinty (クインティ?), is an action game for the NES and Famicom. It is the debut game of Satoshi Tajiri and his company Game Freak. The success of this game inspired him to create the Pokémon series. In Japan, it was published by Namco, while in North America it was published by Hudson Soft. In this game, the player must run around a series of rooms and flip the tiles on the floors to push the enemies into walls and blocks. Clearing a room of enemies allows the player to move on to the next stage.
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Japanese box artwork
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Japanese title screen
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North American title screen
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Game screenshot
Gameplay[edit]
The game can be played by a single player, or by two players co-operatively. The players' characters are a blue- and a green-colored boy in a vest and cap. Each level consists of a single room composed of a 5 by 7 grid of floor tiles surrounded by a boundary wall. At the beginning of each level a number of enemy dolls appear and start to wander around, attempting to collide with the player. The characters have the ability to "flip" the floor tile they are standing on or adjacent to in order to propel enemy dolls away, as well as revealing new floor tiles underneath. Enemies can be destroyed by flipping them into a wall or impassable block. The player(s) must destroy every doll to complete the level and move to the next one. It is also possible to win certain levels by making a "stalemate" in which all the tiles are unflippable like the bolted metal tiles or the graffiti tiles from the Artist dolls.
Each doll does a simple action that varies from each world. They vary from the basic walking motion to swimming and even aggressive tile flippers who have the same abilities to flip random tiles as the player. The level select screen shows each palace along with the enemy dolls that occupy it. Enemy dolls can be destroyed by flipping them into a wall or block, or by slamming into them from a Spinner tile. Touching an enemy causes the player to instantly lose a life. Each world has ten levels which is accompanied by a boss and a scene showing the player's girlfriend being whisked off to another part of the realm.
There are a variety of patterns on the floor tiles that can be collected or affect gameplay. Each particular tile can hide many patterns underneath that can be revealed after multiple flippings. Stars and lives for each player are tracked separately on the screen. Some rooms are in darkness where players must anticipate useful tiles and enemies well in advance. If one player loses all of his lives, then the other player must continue to play until he also loses all of his lives.
Story[edit]
The player's character must save his girlfriend, who was kidnapped by a young girl. The backstory differs slightly between the Japanese and American versions, although the in-game presentation is the same regardless. In the American version, the player's character is named Bon-Bon and the girl he must rescue is a Princess named Candy, who is trapped in her own dream. In the Japanese version, the main character is named Carton and the girl he must rescue is merely his own girlfriend, Jenny, who has been kidnapped by Carton's younger sister Quinty (the titular character in the Japanese version), who is jealous of the attention that Jenny gets.