Cooking Mama: Cook Off (クッキングママ みんなといっしょにお料理大会! Cooking Mama: Minna to Issho ni Oryōri Taikai!) is a video game for the Wii that was developed by Cooking Mama Limited (known at the time of release as Office Create) and published by Taito in Japan, Majesco Entertainment in North America, and 505 Games in Europe and Australia. This game was the first to introduce 3D models and additional characters outside of Mama.
It is the sequel to the 2006 Nintendo DS game Cooking Mama and was released in Japan on February 8, 2007 and in North America on March 20, 2007. In Europe (other than in Germany), it was released on May 11, 2007, with an Australian release closely following on May 17, 2007.
On March 11, 2010 the game was re-released in Japan with the "Dream Age Collection Best". This edition has special box art and a unique logo when booting up the game. The game is identical to the original Japanese release.[1]
In 2012, the "Mama's 2-Pack" was released, where Cooking Mama: Cook Off and Cooking Mama: World Kitchen where packaged together in one game. This version patched most known bugs, along with making minor changes.
The Wii sequel to this game, Cooking Mama: World Kitchen was released in the US on November 2008, while the series sequel was Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends.
Modes[]
- Let's Cook - The main menu and feature in the game.
- Friends and Food of the World - In this mode the player can challenge one of the friends. For winning the player will receive a special utensil for use. If they lose, as a consolation prize they win an object to decorate the kitchen with.
- Friends and Food - The multiplayer mode, compete with a friend as the second player. Both players try to achieve a higher score than the other. Player with the higher score wins.
- Options - One can return to the menu screen, manage the kitchen, initialize date, or view credits.
- In Let's Cook, you can click Return, Practice, Start, or the moving MAKE IT button to change it into Challenge Mode. Practice is not available in Challenge Mode.
- Return - Returns you back to the previous screen.
- Start - Starts the recipe.
- Practice - Lets you practice individual steps of the recipe.
- Challenge Mode - Harder version of the recipe. The timer moves faster, each step is played immediately after each other, if you receive a Try Harder the recipe ends prematurely.
Recipes[]
In this game, recipes are marked by the countries they come from. There are 10 countries in total: Spain, Russia, Japan, France, United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Italy, China, and India. There are 55 recipes to unlock.
Recipes are played in the same style as all other cooking mama games, with added motion controls.
The recipes unlock the same as most other cooking mama games. Each recipe has a certain recipe it unlocks to (with the exception of 10 recipes which do not unlock anything). When you unlock a new recipe, you will unlock the new recipe's country's friend where you can play against them in Friends and Food of the World.
Scoring[]
Unlike other cooking mama games, scoring works differently. You get a final score at the end of the recipe depending on different factors. At the end of each step, you get an evaluation score, and a time score, your total combined score, and if you got a bonus or not. Challenge Mode does not show you this screen.
- Evaluation - If you achieve a Very Good you receive is 100 points, Good is 50 points, and Try Harder is worth 0 points.
- Time - You get a score from 0-99 points depending on how fast you completed the step. However, if you achieve a Try Harder (or a Good on any can opening step), then you always achieve 0 points.
- Bonus - Certain steps you are able to achieve a 100 point bonus. For example, if you knead perfectly for the entire step, you achieve a 100 point bonus. There are 19 unique bonuses.
Once you have completed a recipe, the results screen shows you how many Very Good, Good, and Try Harders you have achieved during the recipe. Along with the score you achieved, the time you achieved, the medal you achieve, along with your high score.
The in-game timer adds up the time you spent on each step while the clock in the top right corner is moving. If there is no clock, then the game doesn't include the time for that step. If you receive a Try Harder (or a Good on any can opening step), then the game treats as if you spent the entire clock time on that step.
Your high score is then saved on the recipe, along with the time you achieved on that playthrough.
Known Bugs[]
- The cursor will blink some times, causing the input to drop. This is most frustrating on a Deep fry! step, since it can drop an ingredient with you don't want to, causing you to miss a gold (or worse). Not present in the Mama 2 Pack.
- When you play an Add seasoning! step for the first time, the game will trigger a fail for the first seasoning even if you haven't moved your remote. Not present in the Japanese version(s), or the Mama 2 Pack.
- Additionally, the shakers in the Add seasoning! step may stop moving part way through the step, preventing you from completing it for a gold or bonus score. This is more likely to occur when the bug above has not been triggered, along with if the step has a large number of shakers. This can be largely mitigated if a fail has been manually inputted during the early part of the step. The bug tends to not happen more than twice. Not present in the Japanese version(s), or the Mama 2 Pack.
- The game will randomly crash after pressing the return button within a recipe. This is a very rare occurrence, and tends to occur more often on dirty discs. Has only been seen to occur on the original North America release.
Trivia[]
- In Manage Kitchen, Papa and Ichigo appear in a small picture frame you get from German Friend. This is technically their first appearance in the series.
Gallery[]
Videos[]
Official Cooking Mama Cook Off Trailer
Cooking Mama Cook Off Infomercial
Tracks[]
Music Track 1
External links[]
- Cooking Mama: Cook Off official website (archived 2007-04-23)
- クッキングママ - みんなといっしょにお料理大会！ official Japanese page at Office Create
- Cooking Mama: Cook Off at Behind The Voice Actors
- Cooking Mama: Cook Off at the Internet Movie Database
- Cooking Mama: Cook Off at MobyGames
- Cooking Mama: Cook Off at Wikipedia