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The
noble Pink NintendoDS Lite has been just been announced for
Europe
– coming
October 27th, 2006
– and, along with it’s release in
Japan
came a new game
It Talks! DS Cooking Navi (or Navigator) which is, rather
than a Cooking Simulator game as it first appeared to be, an actual
cook book for the NintendoDS.
From
what we can decipher, you can check-up on recipes and actually
follow the instructions given on-screen to create the dish in your
own home. The title features several different modes in which to
select your dish, as well as including the original Chef!
Game & Watch game. Within these modes you can plan your meal
from selecting a certain ingredient according to what you have at
home already, or you can take a look at the extensive cook book,
which has over two-hundred recipes included, and check-out what
takes your fancy by scrolling through the different categories. You
can chose certain criteria which your meal must contain for example
how many calories the meal has, how long it will take to cook or
even how expensive the ingredients are. You can also input certain
keywords to narrow your search down, and It
Talks! DS Cooking Navi will tell you how to prepare a set meal
for however many people you tell it.
Because
of its voice-activated nature, if you have your hands full of
ingredients you can simply say next and it will go on to the next
page or backtrack to the previous page if you need to refresh your
memory. It can also talk to you so don’t need to constantly look
back at your NintendoDS.
It
Talks! DS Cooking Navi catalogues what you have already cooked
in a Memorial Calendar accessible from the Main Menu, allowing you
to check details of the recipes, handy if you have a limited
palette. You can also mark recipes as favourites, and comment on
them for future reference.
You
can even tell the It Talks! DS Cooking Navi if you have an
allergy, and it will alert you in the Recipe Lists if your chosen
allergen is among those ingredients. For the total cooking novice
the game also includes an encyclopaedia with all common terminology
used in cooking as well as items used (spatula, potato peeler, spoon
etc.) and how to cut vegetables in various ways.
The
advertisement which accompanies the game shows off the NintendoDS’
abilities superbly, from using the Touch Screen to pick which menu
to use, to speaking into the Microphone to turn the pages of the
recipe. The advert shows a man at home with his children - they are
all hungry. Next we see the man cooking with his NintendoDS in front
of him, he says “Okay” and the pages turn. Next, screenshots are
shown indicating different Menu Screens. The family sit down to
enjoy the meal created by their father and his NintendoDS. Right at
the end they also show the new Noble Pink NintendoDS Lite, being
released the same day.
When
you consider the rise in men taking up cooking lessons, as they have
more free time due to retirement,  living
in a dual income family and needing to lend a hand with the
housework or simply as an enjoyable hobby it is maybe unsurprising
to see the advert seemingly targeting men. However with the Pink
NintendoDS Lite being released in conjunction with this Cooking
Navigator it would suggest the opposite, especially as in the queues
which formed for the arrival of the new pink NintendoDS Lite among
the increased amount of women were many men who cited they were
buying the new NintendoDS Lite as a gift.
This
isn’t the first cooking game to be released in
Japan
, in march this year Taito released Cooking
Mama which seems like the more lightweight of the two games. In
this you must use the Touch Screen to cook food on the NintendoDS,
yet doesn’t have that instructional edge to it. Cooking Mama
could be called a game, more of a Cooking Simulator whereas It
Talks! DS Cooking Navi is more as a piece of software or
reference material. It Talks! DS Cooking Navi has no
UK
release date even suggested at current, but
given the popularity of the Touch! Generations series in
Europe, it may only be a matter of time.
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