« Culinary Arts Colleges Offer Great Opportunities | Home | The Atkins Diet and Appetite Suppression »
Video Games that Teach You How to Cook
By Patrick Shay | May 29, 2009
You probably always that most video games focused on beating enemies, winning a race, or solving a puzzle. However, Nintendo has added a new dimension to video games–cooking. Several of their titles, available for the portable Nintendo DS, focus on cooking. Most games are centered around teaching new skills to those with little experience in the kitchen. I was very surprised at the number of games available in the cooking genre. These are just a few samples:
If you’d like to test your skills in the kitchen against a famous chef you should give What’s Cooking? with Jamie Oliver a try. This game includes 100 recipes which you can try cooking both on the Nintendo DS and in your own kitchen. You can also share other recipes with friends and family using the Wifi connection. Most people think this game does better as a virtual cookbook but either way it’s definitely a challenge and a lot of fun.
If you’d like to learn and master the art of fine French cooking you might be interested in Gourmet Chef: Cook Your Way to Fame. Adults would probably enjoy this game more than children. Although if you have a child that is serious about cooking they might also appreciate this game more than a kid who just wants to have fun playing a video game. In Gourmet Chef you’ll learn many tasks with the stylus which you can later apply to real recipes.
Cooking Mama is another very popular cooking game for the Nintendo DS. The main focus of this game is racing against the clock against other chefs. Everyone is fighting for the gold medal. You will definitely do a lot of work with the stylus if you decide to play this game. However, the microphone on the Nintendo DS is also an important tool. You can blow into the microphone to help cool down your dishes!
Personal Trainer: Cooking is more like a virtual cookbook than a video game. Unlike many other cooking games, the purpose of Personal Trainer is to use the recipes to make real meals in your own kitchen. This game features a chef who talks you through over 245 recipes from around globe. This might be the most innovative cooking game available for the Nintendo DS Lite.
Since the Nintendo DS is portable there are a lot of different things you can do with it including setting it on your kitchen counter while you cook. It also has a microphone so during different titles like Personal Trainer: Cooking you can simply say, “Next” and it will take it to the next step in the recipe. This is a lot easier than a cookbook where you would need to turn the page and possibly get the book all dirty. It adds a whole new dimension to the cooking experience that you might not have considered before.
Topics: Recipes | No Comments »