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Cooking Mama to nourish European DS owners

Will it cause a stir?

Cooking Mama to nourish European DS owners
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DS
| Cooking Mama

Most days we'd consider ourselves dangerously close to the line if we insisted that Cooking Mama seems targeted at female DS owners (not least because we're dab hands in the kitchen to a man). But with its pastel pink and yellow backdrops and cheery smiling host, it's certainly hard to see the DS recipe deliverer appealing to blokey fans of Gordon Ramsey.

Gender politics aside, Cooking Mama puts the player in the role of a trainee chef. Under Mama's tuition, he – or she –strives to prepare and create over seventy delicious dishes, all thrown together using the DS's unique functionality.

Dishes are rustled up using the DS stylus as your all-in-one kitchen tool. By striking away at the touchscreen, you can chop, slice, pan fry, knead, grate, mash, tenderise, mix, peel, carve, roll and do everything else that only a chef or a serial killer could desire.

After adding some finishing touches, your culinary masterpiece is put before Mama's greedy customers. If it's too hot you can even cool it down by blowing on the in-built DS microphone (presumably out of the diners' sight).

The menu varies from simple snacks such as fried eggs to full culinary masterpieces, and by combining recipes you can create a menu of your own design. There's also 200 mini-games, a practice mode so you won't get egg on your face on opening night, and the chance to swap recipes with friends over wi-fi.

Already out in Japan and America to cult acclaim from gamer's seeking something different (the views of the cooking establishment are not recorded), Cooking Mama hits our kitchens on 8th December.