I.M. Meen

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I.M. Meen
Developer(s)	Animation Magic
Publisher(s)	Simon & Schuster Interactive
Producer(s)	Dale DeSharone Igor Razboff
Designer(s)	Matthew Sughrue
Programmer(s)	Kirill Agheev Dima Barmenkov Misha Chekmarev Linde Dynneson Misha Figurin John O'Brien
Artist(s)	Masha Kolesnikova (character design)
Writer(s)	Matthew Sughrue
Composer(s)	Anthony Trippi
Platform(s)	DOS
Release	NA: August 11, 1995
Genre(s)	Educational, first-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player

I.M. Meen is a 1995 educational game for DOS to teach grammar to children. The player walks around a labyrinth, rescuing children and defeating monsters. The educational aspect of the game comes in the form of "scrolls", writings of I.M. Meen in which the player must correct the grammatical mistakes in order to rescue the children. The game was created by Russo-American company Animation Magic which also developed the CD-i games Hotel Mario, Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. Peter Berkrot provided the voice of I.M Meen, while Gnorris was voiced by John Mahon.

Plot[]

Ignatius Mortimer Meen, an evil magician who despises children and learning, creates a magical book that sucks children inside when they read it. The book takes them to a massive labyrinth, where they are found by monstrous guardians and locked into cells. Players play as two children named Scott and Katie, who are trapped inside this labyrinth. Gnorris, a gnome who has betrayed I.M. Meen, helps the two escape and, after sending them to rescue the other children, presents a magic orb so he can contact the player at any time. He gives hints as the game progresses and warns whenever a boss is nearby.

The player travels through the labyrinth, defeating the monsters and rescuing the children, causing the labyrinth's condition to rapidly deteriorate. The player must eventually confront I.M. Meen himself and defeat him using Writewell's Book of Better Grammar, which he has stolen and hidden in the labyrinth. After his defeat, the magician vows revenge and disappears, declaring that he will return and make good on his promise.

Gameplay[]

The player goes through 36 levels in the game with nine locations, including a tower, a dungeon, sewers, caves, catacombs, hedgerow mazes, castles, laboratories, and libraries. The player must rescue all the children on each level to get to the next one, which is done by fixing grammar mistakes in various scrolls. In every fourth level, the player must defeat a boss monster, otherwise known as one of I.M. Meen's special pets, to advance to a new area. There are items in the labyrinth that can be used to help the player defeat the various monsters that dwell in the labyrinth, as well as help them out in other ways. The player has an Agility Meter, similar to a health meter that, when it runs out, takes the player back to the beginning of the level and removes all items collected on that level. Near the end of the game, the player must defeat I.M Meen himself, who can only be harmed by the Writewell's Book of Better Grammar (other weapons have no effect on him at all). Defeating him and solving the last scroll wins the game.

Reception[]

The Contra Costa Times gave the game a positive review, calling it "the first computer game for young children to use the same fast 3-D graphics found in Doom" and praising it for its educational themes.^[3] Brad Cook of Allgame thought that the game's graphics and sound were well-executed, and thought that the game was well-developed for its time, but concluded his review by saying, "Since this program set out first and foremost to be an educational product, I'll have to give it a low mark because it simply fails to do that, despite how well-done the rest of it is" and gave the game two stars out of five.^[1]

In recent years, the game has been popularized by internet memes. The animated cutscenes have been used in a popular style of video mash up known as YouTube Poop and have been mashed up with other sources such as Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, and Hotel Mario.

Legacy[]

A sequel to the game was made, titled Chill Manor, featuring a story about I.M. Meen's presumed wife, Ophelia Chill, who obtains the Book of Ages and tears out all the pages, allowing her to rewrite history. Meen appears at the game's ending to rescue Ophelia after she is tied to a chair. I.M. Meen, as well as Sonic's Schoolhouse and 3D Dinosaur Adventure: Save the Dinosaurs, has been named as one of the inspirations for the indie game Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning.^[4]

References[]

External links[]

• I.M. Meen at MobyGames