Back to the puzzle grind on Game Boy Works

The threat of matching blocks is never far away on this system.

A bit of a mess in this week's video, on two fronts.

First, on my behalf: This Palamedes retrospective is the first time, I think, that I've completely overlooked a core gameplay mechanic throughout the recording/editing/production process of one of these videos. I could not for the life of me figure out how the opponent in tournament mode was causing blocks to vanish and getting little flashes of text to appear beneath her feet at the same time, and the only manuals available for this version of the game are written in Japanese and German only. So they weren't a lot of help. It was only after I posted the video to Patreon that I learned about the missing mechanic.

That said, this one element doesn't change the fact that Palamedes on Game Boy is a mess (Hot-B, more like Hot Mess, amirite). The conversion from NES to monochrome graphics was handled in a less-than-optimal way by the developer. The dice designs just don't read cleanly enough on Game Boy to allow this game to play at the speed it's supposed to. It is, hands-down, the most inelegant puzzle conversion I've seen to Game Boy to date… and at this point, there's a lot of competition for that claim.

Anyway, I'll revisit this eventually to give it a proper look, but… skip this port. It was kind enough to skip a U.S. release, after all, so you should return the courtesy.