I.M. Meen 64

I.M. Meen has trapped you and the rest of the children in his dungeon maze. Can you make your way out of of it in this port by SpookyIluha? I.M. Meen 64 was released on 28 July 2026 for the Nintendo 64.

You can get the ROM from its download page by using the password whatcleverchildren. You can also check the source code and download it on Github.

About I.M. Meen 64

The original I.M. Meen was released in 1995 by Animation Magic for DOS, the same people behind the Zelda CDi games, hence the similar animation style.

The game is a kid-friendly edutainment first person shooter. Try saying that three times real fast. You play as either a boy or a girl trapped in I.M. Meen’s book, trying to find your way out and rescue as many children as you can along the way.

It’s a first person shooter, all taking place on one floor. It’s reminiscent of Wolfenstein 3D with all the monotone walls and the whole action taking place on one floor. Except that most of it takes place in hallways that are just one tile wide with identical walls. That’s the point of a maze, I guess.

Along the way, you have to contend with enemies that try to take you down, locked doors and more obstacles than you can shake a stick at.

Children are hidden behind magic scroll doors, which can only be unlocked after completing an educatuional puzzle. Basically, you’ve given a chunk of text, and play spellchecker to find the errors in punctuation, spelling and capitalisation. You can take your time with them and have infinite chances to complete it.

This port also has a different HUD from the original game. It’s full-screen with items, health and portrait imposed on top of it, rather than having a small viewport and everything shifted to the side.

After going through a bunch of levels, you’ll eventually confront the titular villain and emerge victorious.

Tips

You can use L + Z + C-Left on the level select screen to skip to any level you want.

The walls are so monotonous, you’ll get lost easily (and taunted by I. M. Meen for it). So be sure to open your map often to find places you have yet to visit and find your way around the labyrinth.

Review and conclusion

This is a very faithful recreation of the classic DOS game. It has that old-school 3D maze feel, the MIDI music and those awesome cutscenes.

On a technical note, I love how the cutscenes aren’t built with the Libdragon video player, but rather by just displaying spritesheeted bitmaps of each frame. It’s probably much more expensive storage-wise, but perfectly delivers the crisp cartoon art that Animation Magic is known for. If anything, the interlaced display doesn’t work well with digital video outputs, but that’s just a nitpick.

The mazes are proper mazes. The different floors each have their own visual theme, within each for the walls are all identical. There are a few landmarks here and there, but otherwise you’re on your own. Open the map, and open it often if you don’t want to get lost along the way. I would have like a one-click view of the map, but at least there’s something.

I.M. Meen 64 runs well, sounds well, and works well as an edutainment game with a bit of simple first-person action. What isn’t there to love?

Now we just need Wand of Gamelon and Faces of Evil 64.