If Dr Frankenstein made handheld games...

This requires some imagination but what would happen if Dr Frankenstein got his hands on a development studio? Imagine the carnage, imagine the commotion, imagine the creativity…

Because if modern game development is about anything, it's about taking bits and pieces from individual genres to make something new. But not all experiments end in plaudits. For every Grand Theft Auto there's another generic karting title with weapons and mini-games thrown in.

So in an attempt to find a fine blend we give you five games that may be the future of cross-genre gaming. Or just end up as monstrous rejects.
Dr Frankenstein's Handheld Games

Grand Theft Animal Crossing: Touched! Take the cutesy world of Animal Crossing and add the hard-edged narrative and characters from GTA: Vice City Stories, then blend with some mini-game madness from Wario Ware Touched! What would it look like? How would the missions play? Would you be able to trade chainsaws instead of pompom hats? At first it sounds daft (stay with us on this), but when you think about it a persistent world with more adult themes could be just the tonic for your DS or PSP. In the single-player mode you would decorate your nightclub, strip joint or casino complex with a range of self-created skins, build up relationships with the local thugs, pushers and gang bosses then trade all your hard earned contraband over wi-fi using your friend codes. Bonus points are awarded if you collect every weapon in the game. But where does Wario Ware: Touched! come in? The individual mini-games are triggered whenever you commit a felony. Hmm, perhaps Dr Frankenstein needs to think about this one a little more.
Burnout: Driving Theory Training Just two genres collide here to make something that's both fun and educational. There's an old saying that you can't truly know what it's like to be a safe driver until you've been on the ragged edge. Actually, we just made that up but it would make good ad copy. You begin by answering a series of Highway code questions officially licensed by the Driving Standards Agency. Once you've successfully negotiated the theory part of the test you can take to the roads, but safe in the knowledge that any errors will be corrected by your ever present instructor, a man called Colin who chirpily points out whenever you're up on the kerb. This being a learning simulator, there has to be a budget, though at £20 a lesson this is quickly reduced especially if you're like Maureen from Driving School. Your Burnout meter increases every time you complete a successful manoeuvre and by the time you've passed the actual test this should be ready to burst. At this point you revert to type and rip up the streets like any self-respecting 17-year-old who's just gained a full licence.
Pokémon Football: Under the Knife What would happen if Pokémon, Trauma Centre and FIFA Football were suddenly fused together? It could be a mess, or absolute genius. The central conceit is that you must gather together a football team for a giant 100-a-side tournament by foraging for them in the undergrowth of the Kanto region. All the world's major football stars make it, each with a special defence or attack ability. So Wayne Rooney glowers, Didier Drogba dives and El Hadji Diouf spits. Injuries are sustained along the way, of course, and they are always serious – not the type of thing you can ease with a wet sponge and Ralgex. We're talking cruciate ligament damage, compound fractures and the classic swallowing of the tongue. This is where the Trauma Centre bit comes in. Quick reflexes, a scalpel, forceps and bandages cure practically every ailment. Except for the tongue thing which is always best tackled with the handle from a pair of scissors.
Katamari Meltdown Ac!d Metal Gear Ac!d surprised everyone when it was first announced so we see no reason why this would be any less outlandish. At its heart it's a card collecting stealth game but with a twist. Any security system you encounter, whether it be CCTV camera, electronic lock or a computer that needs to be hacked, triggers off a devilish mini-game that fuses the best elements of Mercury Meltdown with Me and My Katamari. Only when you roll the mercury ball around the labyrinthine levels it picks up other mercury along the way, growing and eventually overloading the computer system. William Gibson eat your heart out. It's the perfect antidote to the joyless hacking and lock-picking that we have to encounter in practically every stealth game. Here it's fun and the kind of virtual reality meta game that movies like the Lawnmower Man envisaged in the early '90s. The only downside to this package is that the drab card collecting element is every bit as dull as it was in Konami's original PSP games.
Final Fantasy: Elite Beat Cooking Mama As the Final Fantasy titles have splintered off in a thousand directions it's no real stretch to imagine one solely based around culinary magic. The quest is to gather together ingredients for the queen's special birthday banquet, and as you have to cater for 500 people at 30 gil a head, it's going to take some serious adventuring. There's the usual stuff like unicorn horn, goat's blood and hens' teeth to be found but what the hell is nigella damascena and exactly how long should an egg be boiled for? All weapons are cookery related, with the Spoon of Plenty unlockable only after all 1000 individual ingredients have been found. Back at the palace kitchen you have to prepare everything – an exercise in multitasking that can only be represented in a rhythm-action form. With pans flying and spaghetti hitting the wall, this is the closest you're going to get to The F Word without feeling Gordon Ramsay's breath in your face in person.