Baku Baku Animal

The Japanese onomatopoeia "Baku Baku" roughly translates to "Chomp chomp".

• Title — Baku Baku Animal • Developer — Sega • Publisher — Sega • Released — ArcadeApril 1995 Saturn Game Gear Windows Master System MobileFebruary 13, 2002 • Platforms — Arcade, Sega Saturn, Game Gear, Windows, Master System, mobile phone • Genre — Puzzle • Modes — Single-player, multiplayer • Arcade System — Sega Titan Video (ST-V)

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.

• Illustration — Arcade screenshot 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.

• Illustration — Baku Baku Animals predecessor Tetris (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. In a 2007 article titled Swap Adjacent Gems to Make Sets of Three: A History of Matching Tile Games (Figure 3), its legacy is noted within the history of tile-matching video games. Author Jesper Juul states Baku Baku Animal's gameplay rule ("special objects to match") distinguishes it from previous titles. 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."