Baku Baku Animal

About Baku Baku Animal

Baku Baku Animal (1995), released abroad as Baku Baku, is Sega's falling-block puzzle game in which animals eat their favourite foods, acclaimed on the Saturn and named Computer Gaming World's puzzle game of 1996.

Baku Baku Animal in Depth

Animal and food tiles fall into the playfield, and when an animal lands next to its favourite food, such as a monkey beside a banana, it eats it. The more connected food tiles an animal eats in one bite, the more points the player scores, and each meal drops random blocks into the opponent's field, after the piece they are currently placing. The aim is to leave the opponent unable to place any more blocks. Two-player competition was singled out by critics as the heart of the game.

The story has a king holding a competition to hire a royal zoo keeper for his daughter's many pets. The heroine, Polly, must beat the other applicants, each of whom trades a short exchange of dialogue with her before a match, with different responses depending on whether she wins or loses. The game's name is a Japanese onomatopoeia meaning roughly "chomp chomp".

Making Baku Baku Animal

Sega developed the game for Japanese arcades in 1995, and Game Machine listed it as the eleventh most successful arcade game there in May 1995. It was then ported to the Saturn, Game Gear and Windows. The Saturn version was acclaimed: Maximum called it "the best 'next generation' puzzle game we've seen to date", Sega Saturn Magazine praised "some of the most addictive puzzle play since Tetris", and GamePro called it "undeniably the best puzzle game in the world so far". EGM's reviewers praised the Game Gear version as simple and accessible yet strategic. Computer Gaming World named it its 1996 classic/puzzle game of the year, warning that it "will eat up your time", EGM made it runner-up for handheld and puzzle game of the year behind Tetris Attack, and PC Gamer ranked it the 72nd best computer game ever in 1997.