Just in time for Food Science Day, I come across a new DS ‘eat-em-up’ entitled Cooking Mama! In this game you can “create 76 different, real world dishes from fried eggs to cabbage meat rolls! The stylus is your master kitchen tool! Use it in more than 200 mini-games to chop, slice, pan fry, knead, grate, mash, tenderize, mix, peel, carve, roll and more. Once your dish is ready, you can even use the stylus to prepare the final layout of your meal”!
The gameplay looks like following Wario-Ware style mini-game formats as you create step by step dishes, sauteeing noodles for exactly the right period of time looks tricky, and frankly it’s hard enough getting the right amount of water into your rice in the REAL kitchen, never mind your cute Japanese lady avatar’s domestic abode. Can you imagine curious tube onlookers as you swear in frustration when you haven’t given your rice enough rinsings? The game also supports wireless connectivity so you can swap virtual recipes with your friends – and seeing as the game is available to UK buyers for £11.99 (movietyme.com), maybe more of your friends will have this game than you’d think!
I certainly like the look of it myself – other food based games I have enjoyed are include the bit in Paper Mario 2: The Thousand Year Door where you give found foodstuffs to a grumpy Mushroom who will inevitably come back to you and say “Here… it’s A Mistake!”, and of course the classic BURGER TIME! Surely there must be more out there… and I want to find them!!