Mendel Palace (NES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Hudson Soft's 1990 action-puzzle game for the NES, Mendel Palace. This video shows both the regular game and the "extra" mode. "Extra Mendel Palace" begins at 56:30. Candy has been trapped in a dream by her dolls and is being held at Mendel Palace. As her best friend, Bon Bon, it's your job to risk life and limb to save her. Mendel Palace is a single-screen, arcade-style action game with a puzzler slant. There are eight ten-stage mansions, each home to a different type of doll, that have to be cleared before you can enter Mendel Palace for the final battle. The goal is to clear the screen of dolls, which is done by flipping floor tiles to send them flying into the walls, smashing them to splinters. Many tiles reveal hidden things (like stars, 1-ups, bonus stages, special attacks, and enemy generators) when flipped, and in the later stages, your success against the hordes depends on your knowing where the items are hidden and when to use them. The enemies are easy at the start, but the challenge ramps up quickly, and you'll need a lot of practice to reach the end. It's not as dark or edgy as the TV commercials made it seem, but Mendel Palace is a fun, cutesy game that poses a good challenge, and it packs a lot of content - 200 stages, in all - to keep you coming back for more. It also has a really cool title screen that looks better than the painted box art it's based on. In the modern day, perhaps the most notable thing about Mendel Palace is that it was the first game by Game Freak, the studio that later went on to create the Pokémon franchise. (That boss battle theme sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?) On a random personal note, I've often wondered about the name Hudson gave the game when they brought it to North America. I get that they wanted something less cutesy than the Japanese name ("Quinty"), but why "Mendel" Palace? Did the flipping of tiles to effect a desired outcome remind someone of doing Punnett squares back in high school bio? _____________ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete (
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