Palamedes

Overview

Palamedes is a tile-matching puzzle game developed by Taito and released for arcades in 1990 by Taito (in Japan) and Hot-B (in North America).

A puzzle game reminiscent of the later Magical Drop series, Palamedes has players moving their characters (a boy for P1 or a girl for P2) back-and-forth on the bottom of the playfield, throwing dice blocks (resembling standard dice) up at an oncoming barrage of dice blocks to match them and clear them out. In addition, players use the dice they match to form "hands" that, when used properly, can clear lines of blocks automatically.

The game later received ports in Japan by Natsume for the Famicom (on July 6, 1990), the Game Boy (on October 12, 1990), the MSX (on December 8, 1990), and the FM Towns (on October 1991). All were published by Hot-B (except the FM Towns version, which was published by Ving). The NES version was later released in North America on November 1990, while the Game Boy version was later released in Europe (by TAKARA in 1991).

The NES version later received a Japanese-exclusive sequel in 1991, titled Palaedes II: Star Twinkles.

Gameplay

Players move their character left and right using the joystick, change their die's die (from 1 to 6) using the left-most button, and throw their die upward using the right-most button. If the die matches the bottom-most dice in their column, that die is cleared out and players earn points.

In addition, clearing dice adds them to the "hand" at the bottom of the screen. Up to six die can be in the player's hand, with additional ones removing the first-most one. When the player has a valid hand combination (a "winning structure"), pressing down on the joystick uses up the hand to clear up to five of the bottom-most lines of blocks on the playfield.

Game Modes

Along with the standard solitaire game (Normal Game), which can also be played with two players simultaneously, the game includes two versus modes: player-vs-computer (Tournament Game) and player-vs-player (VS Game).

In the versus modes, both players attempt to outlast each-other while sending additional lines (from lines they clear for themselves) as attacks. Only lines that are actually cleared from the player's side are counted in attacks (for example, a five-line clear when it only clears two lines from the playfield only counts as a two-line clear in attacks) and the first line is discarded (with one-line clears sending no attack lines at all). In addition, VS Game allows both players to negotiate a handicap option, allowing one player to ignore 1-2 additional lines from each attack.

Tournament Game is set in an in-game tournament against various characters, and does not include continues.

Combinations

There are ten basic combinations of dice required to clear lines, with hands able to have multiple combinations for more points (such as 3-3-3-1-2-3 clearing two lines, due to having both a three-of-a-kind and a three-dice sequence, and 4-4-4-4-5 clearing four lines, due to having a four-of-a-kind with all numbers in the hand adding to 21).

Consecutive and sequential dice must be added in-order for it to be valid. For example, 4-5-4-4 is not a valid three-of-a-kind, and 1-3-2 is not a valid three-dice sequence.

1-Line Clear

• Three of a Kind
• Three-Dice Sequence
• Dice Numbers Add Up to 21

2-Line Clear

• Four of a Kind
• Four-Dice Sequence

3-Line Clear

• Five of a Kind
• Five-Dice Sequence
• Three Dice Pairs

4-Line Clear

• Six of a Kind

5-Line Clear

• Six-Dice Sequence