Mendel Palace (Nintendo NES, 1989)

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 boys 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. 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.

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.