Baku Baku 1996 By: Sega

Overview:

This is an insane little puzzle block game similar to Columns or Tetris, and yet, very different. In this game you have animals and food as the block pieces, and it looks completely different from most games of this type. For one thing, it has some crazy looking animation involved with block removal.
The music is simple and not bothersome (well at least until you stack too close to the top and it speeds up and makes you nervous). Game play gets surprisingly intense for this childish-looking game, and it is highly addictive. Also, not a bad game to play with kids; though they may not be able to realistically compete (it might just be too difficult), they are sure to enjoy the look and animation of the game (at least for as long as something of this nature can hold the kid's attention). Also some of the commentary is funny, though not always polite.

Directions:

Compete against different opponents to clear blocks off of the screen. The blocks either have an animal or something that an animal eats on them, and they fall in sets of two (when they aren't garbage raining down). There are: Dogs-Bones, Pandas-Bamboo, Rabbits-Carrots, and Monkeys-Bananas. Line up an animal with the food that it eats and it'll do just that, eat it. You actually watch the little animal heads open these comically huge jaws and chomp down all the food it can. What an animal can reach to eat is anything that it considers food that is touching on a side (horizontally or vertically). They'll also eat other animals of the same kind as them that are on the end of a string of food (whoa, once they get started stay outta their way..... really it's kinda messed up). They won't eat animals that are under them or behind them, however. They also will not eat anything that is only touching corners (diagonally).
Create opportunities for combos by stacking the blocks so that when you eliminate some of them, others will fall into place and be eliminated as well. This will drop garbage (random pieces which fall uncontrollably) down on your opponent. The bigger the combo, the more garbage will fall, but watch out! They'll do it to you as well. Not only that, but sometimes the garbage you drop on your opponent falls propitiously and they get a mess of combos from it, sending garbage right back at you.
Press Down to make the blocks fall faster, and just keep playing until your opponent stacks up! Or, less optimistically, until you stack up and lose the game. :-(