Every week in Dusting Off, we take a look at an album, game or movie you may have missed. In the inaugural edition, we unearth his copy of Zoo Keeper for the Nintendo DS.


by Benjamin Buday, Editor-in-Chief

We at Megazine spend just as much time immersing ourselves in obscure and old movies, games and records as we do checking out the most recent and mainstream releases. It only seemed right to set aside a column to hit you with retrospective reviews of lesser-known titles you may have missed. Chances are, these came right from our collections, and maybe you know ‘em but haven’t had chance to check ‘em out.

To be totally honest, the blurb for this week’s edition is a bit of a misnomer; I did not, in fact, unearth Zoo Keeper. I actually play this game very frequently, perhaps every other day. But nonetheless, I’m guessing most of you never got a chance to play Zoo Keeper.

This relatively obscure treasure first appeared stateside at the beginning of 2005 to little fanfare. In 2008, Zoo Keeper struggles to stand out among a sea of puzzle games like Meteos and Tetris DS, but back in early 2005, as the DS was still in its infancy, Zoo Keeper was one of the first of its kind for the system. The reason Zoo Keeper gets so much play time on my DS, despite its age and the vast number of puzzle choices for Nintendo’s handheld, lies in its functionality on the system: it’s an adaption of an addicting cell phone game and one that’s actually good.

Zoo Keeper resembles the popular cell phone game Bejeweled but adds structure to the formula to give players incentive to progress. The goal of the game is to slide puzzle pieces, which are various zoo animals, to align rows of three or more of the same animal. However, you can only slide an animal if it will make a row, so the game isn’t just arbitrarily moving pieces until it works.

The twists that Zoo Keeper adds to the Bejeweled formula are what make it so damned addictive. In the main marathon mode, players start the game with a quota of animals to capture, which is done by clearing rows of each animal. At first, three of each animal must be captured in order to progress to the next round. From there, each round increases the quota, so the rounds get longer and longer as you try to hunt down enough lions and elephants before your timer runs out.

Gameplay is controlled by either the buttons or the stylus, and trust me, you’ll want to go with the touch control. It’s incredibly responsive and will help you keep up with the pace of the game as your score gets higher. It’s simple but works well.

Unlike Bejeweled, Zoo Keeper won’t end even if you run out of possible moves. The pieces will be shuffled if there are no moves left to make, so losing the game falls directly on the player’s failure to find new moves. That’s what’s awesome about Zoo Keeper — if you can be coordinated and responsive enough to keep the moves going, you could theoretically play indefinitely. Also, stringing together moves quickly adds extra points to your score, so there’s extra incentive in scoping out series of moves and executing them swiftly.

Right from the “Welcome to Zoo Keeper!” that audibly greets you at the title screen, the game draws you in to its goofy, quirky world with silly music, perky sound effects and vibrant colors. The art style won’t blow you away, but it’s colorful and appealing. It’s the little effects that keep the game fun and spirited; each round’s lucky animal (which nets you extra points when captured), displayed prominently on the top screen, and will burst out in alarm when its brethren are captured; the last animal a player needs to catch before meeting the round’s quota will frown at your as you frantically search for clusters of it; and successive moves will elicit stranger noises with each capture. And when you fail, you’re treated to a quick scene of the head zoo keeper lecturing your character, and it’s often nonsensical or just outright ridiculous. The game is quite Japanese in this unapologetically silly sense, and you’ll either love it or not care for it. I, for one, love the hell out of it.

The extra modes round out the overall package, offering a time attack mode, a quest mode, a mode known as “Tokoton,” and a versus mode. The time attack is self-explanatory; you’ve got six minutes to attain the highest score you can. Quest mode has you trying to nab specific amounts of each animal per round. Tokoton has you capturing 100 of each animal before you move onto the next round. But the coolest mode may very well be versus. The single card download versus mode pits you against a friend in an effort to drain his timer by capturing more animals. With each capture, your opponents timer drops. Because these rounds can end quickly, you play best of three series. It’s easy, it’s frantic, and again, only requires one copy of the game.

I guess my only gripe about the game is a bug that apparently was fixed for the European release: the game doesn’t go into sleep mode when you close it. Those with phat DS systems can shut off the light, but us DS Lite owners have to deal.

By today’s standards, the game definitely resembles a launch title and can’t hold a candle to the features that the aforementioned Meteos and Tetris DS offer. I’ve heard it was released with a price tag between $30 and $40, but I found it for $20. For $20, this was a steal of a game back then –though I received my copy as a gift — and, if it were on shelves today, is worth picking up. Good luck finding it though, because methinks it’s out of print. I haven’t seen it anywhere in ages.

I find myself firing up Zoo Keeper constantly. It’s a happy, cheerful distraction from whatever commute I’m making or shift I’m dragging through, and I’m still striving to beat my high scores from years past. It plays like so much more than a simple port of a flash game. If you can find this rare gem, get it. Cherish it. Covet it.

Benjamin can be captured at benjamin@megazinemedia.com.