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Ah, Palamedes, son of Nauplius, a key figure in Greek mythology. But this has nothing to
do with Greece, this game’s about dice. And falling dice. And shooting dice at dice
to counteract... dice. They just happened to name it after the person said culture believed
to have invented dice. And weights and measures, and counting, and money. Dude sounds like
he’d bring the house down in Vegas. But we’re not here to deal with ancient Greek
myth, we’re here for an inexplicable puzzle game from Taito, only it’s not published
by Taito, it’s published by... HOT-B. An uncomfortably warm insect, I presume, because
I’ve no freaking idea who they are. What I can say about them is this: They saw fit
to jam the important part of the manual - what combinations of dice actually do something
- onto the front of the cartridge itself. This is incredibly useful if you have a toploading
NES! Any other model, though, and you’re stuck either copying it all down by hand or,
I don’t know, taking a Polaroid. Of the game cart. So you can play it.
Strange design decisions aside... the game’s actually pretty good. You’ve got a cute
little sprite at the bottom of the screen, holding a die and looking to the lines of
dice descending from the heavens. The B button cycles through the die’s faces, and the
A button launches it up toward the oncoming mass. If it hits a matching face, they disappear
and are collected at the bottom of the screen, where there’s room for up to 6 dice. Hit
the down button while a suitable combination of numbers are showing, and they erase a number
of lines corresponding to the complexity of the combination, just like it says on the
cart! Three of a kind or in a row are good for a single line each, three pair clears
three lines, and a full straight blasts the nearest five lines of dice. Continue making
your way through the cubic onslaught until it peters out, and you’ve cleared the stage.
It’s certainly a unique concept, and frankly, it’s really fun. As far as falling-block-puzzles
go, this is among the more interesting I’ve played, especially given the different ways
to clear blocks. But no falling-block-puzzle game is complete without a two-player mode,
and Palamedes delivers with head-to-head contests against another human or in a tournament mode
against CPU opponents. The gameplay remains the same, save for any lines you clear being
thrown to your foe’s side of the screen. Best of three games takes the match and moves
on to face... a dog. I’m not losing to a dog. When I think of dice-based puzzle games...
well, I think about Bombastic. But now I’m going to have Palamedes creeping around in
the back of my mind. Inventing things. And bugging Odysseus.