Personal Trainer: Cooking

Nintendo exclusive

Personal Trainer: Cooking includes more than 200 recipes from around the world and transforms the Nintendo DS into an electronic, interactive cookbook, complete with a glossary of terms and even instructional videos.

Released: 24 December 2008
Platforms: Nintendo DS
Genres: Simulation
Developers: indieszero Co., Ltd.
Publishers: Nintendo
Modes: Single-player
Themes: Educational
Age ratings: PEGI 3 ESRB E
Languages: English, English (UK), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish (Spain)

About

,, released in North America as Personal Trainer: Cooking, is a 2008 video game developed by indieszero and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS. It was first released in Japan on December 4, 2008, followed by Europe on June 20, Australia on July 3, and North America on November 24. Cooking Guide is part of both Nintendo's Touch! Generations brand and a cooking tutorial software series started from a Japan-only title, Shaberu!

DS Oryōri Navi. In North America, it is also part of the Personal Trainer series.

Keywords

cooking
math
box art - real photos

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Cooking Guide is an "interactive cooking aid" that gives step-by-step instructions on how to cook from a range of 245 dishes. Users are guided through the preparation and cooking process via audio narration and instructional video clips, and can use the Nintendo DS's voice recognition to proceed through each cooking step. Users can also choose recipes based on how many calories they have, or what ingredients they currently have at hand, among other options. Cooking Guide also keeps in memory what dishes users have already made.

The application also allows users to take notes and compile a shopping list, and features functions such as a cooking timer and a quantity calculator. As a bonus, the Game & Watch game Chef can also be played after users unlock it by using the timer during preparation of a recipe, as in one of its predecessors, Shaberu! DS Oryōri Navi. The application guides users in either English, French, Italian, Japanese, German or Spanish.

Development

Released in Japan in 2006, Cooking Guide was originally shown to the US during Nintendo's Media Briefing at the Hollywood Kodak Theatre at E3 2008. It was later shown at the Nintendo US Press Conference Live Blog in San Francisco in October. After selling 600,000 units total in North America and Europe during its first two days of sales, the green-colored version of the DS Lite was later released on May 3, 2009.

Reception

The game was generally well-received, receiving an 81% from Metacritic. Official Nintendo Magazine felt Cooking Guide's features make it "actually better than your average recipe book" and praised both the ease of use of the software and the range of recipes it offers, but considered the European retail price too steep. They gave it 80%. Pocket Gamer felt that while practiced cooks will have little use for it, on the whole it was more useful than other Touch!

Generations titles such as Brain Training. IGN gave Personal Trainer: Cooking a 9/10, praising its accessibility, user interface and features such as the instructional audio narration. It was awarded Best Use of Sound by IGN in their 2008 video game awards.