Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Video Games that Teach You How to Cook

By Patrick Shay

If you're like a lot of people you've probably never considered learning how to cook using a video game console. However, the Nintendo DS has turned cooking into an interactive video game experience with a few different video games. Nintendo hopes to get families to spend more time in the kitchen together with the following titles available for the Nintendo DS.

One game that focuses on cooking competition is What's Cooking? with Jamie Oliver. This interactive game features the famous chef and allows you to test your skills in the kitchen, virtually or in real life. The thought of cooking on a video game may seem odd but once you get started you'll quickly get the hang of it. Even if you don't like the competition you can use any of the 100 included recipes which were created by Jamie Oliver himself.

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.

A very popular cooking game with adults and children is Cooking Mama. There are many different titles to choose from in the Cooking Mama series. In this action-packed game you compete against other chefs to win the gold medal. This game is very interactive and makes use of the advanced features of the Nintendo DS console. One example is being able to cool down your dishes by blowing in the microphone. You really have to be careful with this game though because once you start playing it can be hard to stop.

Instead of a race against the clock, Personal Trainer: Cooking is intended to work more like a virtual cookbook. You can look up different recipes and make them at your own pace. Unlike other cooking games, you make the recipes in your own kitchen using real ingredients instead of pretending to cook on the Nintendo DS. There are over 200 recipes to choose from all over the world.

Believe it or not but there are many other cooking games available for the Nintendo DS than those listed in this article. Even though you might not have considered owning a Nintendo DS before, these cooking games have attracted a whole new audience to the world of hand-held video game consoles. If you'd like to learn how to cook and don't have time to sort through all kinds of books, magazines, or websites you might want to give some of these games a try.

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