Showing posts with label raw horse meat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label raw horse meat. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

A Dollar Menu History of Cooking Games

Ever played Cooking Mama? I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer is yes; after all, the franchise has, at last report, sold over 16 million copies. It’s not exactly the most “hardcore” of games, but there’s no denying that it’s at least reasonably fun. (Not to mention hilarious, if you suck enough at it.) But of all the things Cooking Mama is, there is one important thing that it isn’t: a first. Cooking Mama might be popular around the modern family video gamer, but it’s far from being the progenitor of the cooking genre. The fact is, cooking games have been around pretty much since the very dawn of video gaming as we know it.

For purposes of clarification, it’s a very specific category of game that I’m (briefly) covering here. Burger Time doesn’t count, because making the food is compounded by obstacles like enemies. Diner Dash doesn’t count, because you have no part in actually making the food. And Pizza Tycoon also doesn’t count, because it’s arguably more about managing the restaurant finances than it is about making the food. The primary focus of the game should be making the food to order, and little or nothing else. So that also means nothing based tangentially on a food mascot license, either (I’ll leave that in Bobinator’s hands, honestly).

Pressure Cooker

So we start pretty much at the beginning, with Activision’s Pressure Cooker for the Atari 2600. This is one of my all-time favorite Atari games, and that catchy theme song is only half the reason. The other half is the utter insanity of the concept: you’re a fast food chef, and your job is to assemble burgers according to orders on the bottom of the screen. Except you aren’t just grabbing toppings out of bins like a normal chef; instead, you are in a room with a conveyor belt and five cannons that fire the toppings at you. You catch a topping simply by facing it while it is in flight. If the topping hits you in the face, back, or conveyor belt, it explodes, and you lose one of your 50 performance points. The performance points are basically this game’s equivalent of lives; you lose only one for dropping a topping, but you lose a lot more if you do things like put more than one of the same topping on the same burger, or let a burger drop off the conveyor belt, or try to deliver the burger down the wrong chute. It goes without saying that running out of performance points results in the game ending. They go fast, too, since the toppings fired at you do not necessarily correspond to the orders on the screen. Death is inevitable. Sometimes the game absolutely will not fire the correct topping at you. Such is the limit of video gaming in the early 1980’s.

Short Order

Moving on from Pressure Cooker is the NES game Short Order/Eggsplode!. We’re really more interested in the Short Order half of the game, as Eggsplode! (the alternate game you get if you flip the Power Pad over) is really just a foot-controlled Whack-A-Mole clone. This is one of those NES games that requires the Power Pad, Bandai’s attempt to get gamers to exercise more. Short Order is simple in concept. You are given a sandwich order, and you must assemble it perfectly to order by stomping on the correct buttons on the Power Pad. Honestly, a game like this is really not very fun when playing in a modern emulator, since the game is deliberately simplified to make up for how relatively unwieldy the Power Pad is compared to a traditional controller. It’d probably be much more fun - and more prone to human error - to play with one’s feet.

Ore no Ryouri


Dialing the Time Machine forward a handful of years, we have a Japan-only Playstation release by the name of Ore no Ryouri, which I’m told translates into “I’m the Chef!” This game gained a small cult following in the States after the Japanese demo was hidden away on a Playstation Underground demo disc. It is one of the few Playstation games to require the Dual Shock controller to play, because the preparation of each dish (and all other tasks for that matter) involves a unique minigame involving the use of both analog sticks. Pouring a glass of beer, for example, is more than just sticking the mug under the spout and pouring. You are actually expected to make sure that the beer has a good head, by tilting the glass with one stick while adjusting the spout pressure with the other. Chopping meat and vegetables requires you to move your hand with one stick and the knife with the other, and it’s entirely possible to accidentally cut yourself. Being a Japanese game, most of the dishes are decidedly Japanese in origin, like ramen and soba. I am told that there is a more modern Wii-based version available called Order Up!, but I have not played it.

Ore no Ryomi 2


While that game never got an English release, a Game Maker developer going by the name Mr. Chubigans released two games based on it, entitled “Ore no Ryomi” (which I’m told translates into nothing at all) and made not as a straight remake of the game, but as an interpretation of a magazine preview for it. While they bear amateurish graphics and music borrowed heavily from other games (and Hollywood film scores), the gameplay carries over to the keyboard input quite nicely, at times feeling more like a typing tutor game than a game about cooking, but as you purchase the supplies for more dishes to cook, your restaurant becomes more and more crowded, and the game becomes more hectic. This game was quickly followed up with a more featureful sequel, whose graphics are now 100% drawn by the author, as opposed to being screenshot rips from the Playstation game...for better or worse. The game is still available to download for free at Vertigo Gaming. (Hey, do me a favor while you’re there, pester the guy to make a third game, will you? =P)

Taco Joe


A lot of cooking games are actually not of the sort you can stick in a game console. Many are actually browser-based, but are not any worse for it. Back when games in browser windows were actually starting to become a thing, there was a Shockwave game by the name of Taco Joe (originally hosted at Shockwave.com, now taking refuge throughout the rest of the Net, like here at I-Am-Bored). In this one, you basically work up a rhythm as taco shells scroll by on a conveyor belt. You aren’t working with different order types; all you need to do is make sure that every taco that passes gets one of every ingredient, and that you send the taco to the correct window (don’t try sending the taco to a window with no customer). In practice, it’s much harder than it sounds, especially with the need to kill cockroaches while you’re adding ingredients. The goal in each level is to make enough money (by giving customers complete tacos - you get no money if you forget an ingredient) to bribe the health inspector to let you stay in business.

Papa’s Pancakeria

A personal favorite among the browser-based games is the Papa’s series on Kongregate, by Flipline Studios. They aren’t in any particular order, but each one focuses on a different kind of restaurant. Papa’s Pizzeria obviously deals with pizza, but there are sequels involving pancakes, hamburgers, ice cream, and tacos. These are all made to order, naturally, but instead of being a strictly pass/fail thing like all the other games above, the Papa’s games will actually grade you in a percentage, based on how accurate you were with the various steps of the order, from how well-cooked the meat was, to the distribution of toppings (the rating won’t be as good if you just stack a lot of pepperoni on one side instead of spreading it) and how long it actually took you to get the order ready. Better ratings actually dictate how much money you make for each dish sold, which admittedly doesn’t work so well in real life (though I admit, I would love to see a pay-what-you-want burger joint).

Cooking Mama

And then we end up right back where we started, with the Cooking Mama series. Really, there isn’t much actual game to Cooking Mama. You are graded on the “quality” of your final dish, which does give you various medals (so you can brag to your friends that you got a gold medal on...popcorn?), but you generally aren’t pressured for time, and failing any of the individual steps of a dish just has Mama throw it away and do it herself. Where’s the “game”? Once you’ve cooked every dish, where’s the replay value? Why bother going back and making a dish again? Why is it that this game, as a series, has sold 16 million copies, while nobody really talks about the likes of Pressure Cooker or Taco Joe, despite them being better at being games?

Or maybe I’m just looking at this too hard?

Whatever the case, though, I would love to see more games about making food. We have yet to see games where you run a catering business, or games where you run a soup kitchen (there’s ripe material for one of those “Serious Games,” there)...

There’s one other idea, though, and I’d love to see a game developer roll with this one. You and your opponent are both chefs on opposite sides of a kitchen arena. You are each tasked with making various types of pies to throw at your opponent. Each pie has its own strengths, weaknesses, and individual traits - for example, a cream pie is quick and easy to make, but isn’t very “damaging,” but a lemon meringue pie takes longer and requires more precision in each step, but takes a lot out of your foe’s energy bar if it hits - but both chefs are not exactly stationary targets, as they dash between the different stations for making crust, filling, etc., so when a chef is aiming a pie, they need to be patient. Perhaps one could throw in a Scorched Earth sort of thing, too, where you need to adjust the angle and power of your throw in order to actually hit the opponent, giving you a reason to cook up lots of cream pies to use to gauge your throw for a costlier pie.

At this point I have to wonder if I’m actually this crazy, that I’m dreaming up ideas for fighting games involving pie.

(edit on 6/22/2012: when copying the blog post from my google docs account, i forgot to include the hyperlinks.)

Posted by weas at 12:41 AM 9 comments
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Friday, February 12, 2010

Mahjong, hanafuda, and other Japanese games

With the imminent release of Yakuza 3, I’ve been playing through Yakuza 2 – and I’ve discovered I quite like playing Mahjong in it.

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While I like western card games and Chess (sort of), the intrinsically exotic nature of Asian card/board games has always fascinated me. Unfortunately, living in the west has allowed little opportunity to be exposed to them, outside of foreign films and the occasional videogame. One of the most prominent examples is the Ryu ga Gotoku series, or Yakuza games, by Sega. Another English example is 42-in-1 All Time Classics (aka Clubhouse Games in the USA), a fantastic compilation for the Nintendo DS with a selection of really awesome classic games, complete with comprehensive guides to make learning easy for newcomers.


Join me as I briefly examine some of Asia’s various games, and the easiest methods for learning to play them. Click the names for a Wikipedia link and further explanation of the rules.


Mahjong
One of the things that really irks me is how in the west you’ll find games claiming to be Mahjong, when if fact it’s just a crude version of “snap” using Mahjong tiles. This is weird, and to me makes westerners appear slightly stupid. They’re captivated enough by the imagery of the game, enough to make use of the tiles, but lack the motivation to learn it and just go off and do their own thing.
Having seen Mahjong being played in countless Hong Kong action films, not to mention the ludicrous number of Mahjong games available on every system available, even arcades, I’ve always wanted to try it. Unfortunately it’s extremely complicated and so seldom if ever reaches the west - I seem to recall that Shenmue 2 on the Dreamcast allowed you to play Mahjong, but Sega removed this from the British localisation, presumably because it would have been too much effort to teach it to gaijin players.
Remedying this is the fact that Yakuza 2, also by Sega, not only features Mahjong in English, but it also comes with a fairly decent guide, which is enough to teach you the basics. Rules for the game vary, and Yakuza 2’s are perhaps slightly different from those you’ll find elsewhere (according to a guide I’ve read, they’ve been simplified), but basically you’re given 13 tiles and then each of the 4 players takes turns to pick up and then discard a new tile. Your aim is similar to poker: you want your entire hand to be made up of complete sets before ending the game. A set constitutes either 3 or 4 of the same tile (for example 3 or 4 tiles each featuring 7 bamboo trees), or you need a run in the same suit, for example 1/2/3, and so on, based on the suits which each contain 1-9 numbered tiles. There’s also a few unique tile sets which don’t adhere to the numbering system, instead featuring a kanji which represents a coloured dragon or a wind direction.

So basically you need a full house of 4 complete sets, plus a pair. For example, 1/2/3 - 4/5/6 - 7/8/9 - Dragon/Dragon/Dragon/ - and a pair of 3s in a different suit. You’re then out and that game ends.

You can either keep waiting to pick up the correct tile and then discard a useless one, or you can pick up your opponent’s recently discarded tile - but only if it completes a set you have, and if you do, you’re forced to display this complete set. Different combinations yield different scores, and this is where things get complicated. Yakuza 2’s Mahjong guide is over 20 pages long, listing the various scoring combinations and multipliers you can get. You also need to achieve a qualifying score combination, but this is fairly easy to get.

The best multiplier is when you don’t pick up opponents’ tiles, and complete your hand simply by picking from the deck and discarding. This is called a concealed hand, because you don’t have to reveal anything. So most games boil down to you focussing on your deck and making clever choices with regards to what you keep from the main deck. There’s obviously a lot more to it, and there are some clever tricks, but that’s the basics. You need a mathematical brain to work out the odds of getting your required tile, and a keen player keeps his options open. (having a 3/4 is better than having a 5/7, since with the former a 2 or 5 will let you win, whereas with the latter you’re stuck waiting for the 6)

Afterwards you steal points from your opponents, and so it continues for about 8 hands. The best thing about playing it in a videogame is that the computer handles all the complex scoring. Often I’ve finished a hand with more multipliers than I’d realised. It’s well worth learning to play, and the easiest way would be through Yakuza 2. There’s also a good FAQ on GameFAQs which covers the extra rules not mentioned in Yakuza 2 (you can’t pick up an opponent’s tile if you’ve declared Riichi and the tile you need to win is in your discard pile).I’m not sure if Yakuza 3 features Mahjong, but if it does, hopefully it gets localised and is not cut out. Pictured here is Mahjong Kakutou Club for PS3, by Konami. Here meanwhile is a rather nifty guide.


ShogiHaving been aware of Shogi since learning Chess, this should have been easy to learn. It’s basically the same concept of a board of military figures, each with their own specific movement pattern. You can also promote characters, much like in Chess and Chequers.

Unfortunately while Chess has physical pieces with their own defined shape and colour, Shogi simply has small wooden chips with the piece’s name written on it in Kanaji - sometimes very elaborate Kanji, difficult for the western eye to discern. As such it’s a complete mystery to me. I’ve tried repeatedly to practice it, with easy computer opponents, but after a few minutes the indistinct text becomes blurry and my brain finds it impossible to calculate the situation at a glance. At least with Mahjong each piece is visually distinct and coloured for easy recognition (well, except the Wind pieces, but they constitute only 4 symbols).

If you want to learn how to play, avoid the Yakuza 2 version which has no tutorial (and has REALLY blurry kanji), and instead get 42-in-1 All Time Classics for the Nintendo DS. It has an extremely good guide. There’s also Shotest Shogi on XBLA (pictured).


IgoI first became interested in Go (aka: Igo) when I read that Hiroshi Yamauchi of Nintendo was a keen player, and enjoyed testing Western businessmen he met, if they knew how to play. Losing not too badly apparently impresses him, according to David Sheff’s Game Over book.

Each player takes it in turn to place their coloured stone on a grid. So long as your stone either has an empty space adjacent to it, or has a stone of the same colour along side it which is adjacent an empty space, those stones are alive. Basically image that each stone represents a platoon - if they’re completely surrounded, they’re dead and are removed from the board. The game ends when both players feel there are no further moves to be made.

Unfortunately it suffers from the same problem that makes me sometimes dislike Chess - the need to think ahead by several moves. This never works for me, because if I set up an ingenious 20-step plan for victory, it’s entirely reliant on my opponent not doing anything to upset it. So if they do something 15 moves in which doesn’t fit my template, out goes the complicated plan and my patience.

Thing is, with Chess you can wing it a lot of the time, and so I play on the fly. I’ve heard that’s how Chess players who take on multiple opponents do it - they focus only on each move at hand and ignore long-term strategy. You can’t do this with Go – you need to look ahead, I’m told, by sometimes 50 moves. By the time I’ve seen the strategy my opponent has been planning, it’s too late and everyone is dead – there’s no sending the Queen to the frontline to sacrifice herself and freak the opponent out. There are no gung-ho moves in Go and the value of any single stone is only built over considerable time.

Which is a pity, because conceptually I love the game. No complicated rules about what pieces do what, just black stones and white stones on a grid. A battle for territory where each placed piece remains stationary until capture. It’s kind of poetic. I’ve played a few games with a Japanese friend’s father, and I’ve dabbled in various game versions, from the Famicom to the DS, but I’ve never found one in English (except online versions), and I’ve never found one that I was comfortable enough with to really practice on.
Do any HG101 readers have a console version of Go they’d recommend? I’d love to find an English version for a handheld system, or even an intuitive Japanese title for PS3. Apparently 1 in every 222 people on Earth plays Go!


Hanafuda
Ahh, now this is my favourite, more so than any of the above. I learned this on my first trip to Japan, playing it wherever I wandered, like some kind of card-playing Ronin.
A Japanese woman with hanafuda tatoos


There are 12 suits, based on each month of the year, each containing 4 cards. Every card has a visual representation, like a man in the rain, a stork, or just plain flowers, so they’re easy to memorise. Two players take it in turns to pick a card from the deck, and then either match one of the cards in their hand with one of those face up on the table, or discard one from their hand. You match cards of the same suit, so if there’s 2 September cards on the table, you need one of the other 2 September cards to pick one on the table up.
The fun comes from the scoring combinations. To win a game you need to achieve at least one scoring combination (for example: Wild Board, Wild Deer and Butterflies - or Sake Cup and Full Moon). After that you can either continue playing until you get another combination, or end it there to receive your scores for that combination. Continuing is risky though, since if the opponent then gets a combination, he’ll receive double the points.
I first played it while wearing loose jimbei, sipping warm sake and eating chilled raw horse meat in a small mountain town, while outside the cicadas buzzed in the hot night air – there are few other things to do in Japan which, to me, convey such an authentic atmosphere. As the game of choice for the nation’s organised criminals, there’s a certain satisfaction when getting into a really good game and discussing the poetic merits of each score combination. This was also the card game that made Nintendo’s fortune in their early days, and they still manufacture it.

For added fun, it’s said there are as many rule variations as there are Japanese towns, and inventing your own scoring combinations for play with friends is encouraged, as long as everyone is happy with them.
Videogame wise there are nearly as many Hanafuda games as Mahjong available, though the best is in Clubhouse Games on the Nintendo DS, which is in English with a great learning guide. The rules and scoring combinations are pleasant and authentic, and the computer takes care of things like scoring, even going so far as to make cards in your hand flash if they can be paired up with something on the table. This is perfect, as it allows beginners to learn it very quickly. It also features online play, so you never need feel bored with the computer AI!

If you have any interest at all in card games, you owe it to yourself to learn Hanafuda, which is supremely satisfying to play.
Posted by Sketcz at 12:30 PM 12 comments
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