Baku Baku Animal

The King is hosting a competition to hire a royal zoo keeper for his daughter's numerous pets. The main character, Polly, must fight her way through other applicants to earn the position. Each opponent has an intro dialogue with different responses based on if the player wins or loses. ==Gameplay==

Baku Baku Animal is a falling block puzzle game in which the player lines up falling animal and food tiles. When an animal is adjacently aligned to a tile of its favored food (e.g. monkey and banana), the animal eats the food. The number of connected food tiles eaten in one bite from an animal tile determines the point amount; more connected tiles means more points for the player. When animals eat food tiles, they also make random blocks fall in the opponent's area, right after the opponent's currently falling blocks. The object of the game is to make one's opponent unable to place more blocks. ==Reception==

In Japan, Game Machine listed Baku Baku Animal as the eleventh most successful arcade game of May 1995. The Saturn version was met with critical acclaim upon release, with Maximum calling it "the best 'next generation' puzzle game we've seen to date". Critics lauded the addictive gameplay, especially in two-player competitive mode, It was a finalist for the Computer Game Developers Conference's 1996 "Best Trivia or Puzzle Game" Spotlight Award, but lost the prize to ''You Don't Know Jack XL. Electronic Gaming Monthly named the Game Gear version a runner-up for "Hand-Held Game of the Year" and the Saturn version a runner-up for "Puzzle Game of the Year" (beaten in both cases by Tetris Attack''). Baku Baku Animal was named the 72nd best computer game ever by PC Gamer in 1997. ==Other media==

'' (1989) on Game Boy A white label 12-inch EP consisting entirely of dance tracks using sound effects from Baku Baku Animal, recorded by The Dream Team and Timebase for the Suburban Base label, was circulated to disc jockeys in 1996. Additional evidence for the popularity of Baku Baku Animal is its use as an example of a falling-block puzzle game (a sub-genre of the tile-matching video game). A 1997 The Psychologist article about video game violence used it to describe puzzle games along with Tetris. Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo was compared to Baku Baku Animal in Sega Saturn Magazine: "The bottom line is that Super Puzzle Fighter II X is a brain-rending game of skill and cunning, which is effectively a remake of Baku Baku Animal, albeit one with some of the best presentation ever seen in the hotly contested field of Sega Saturn puzzle games." == Notes ==