America's Test Kitchen: The Game

Americas-test-kitchen-lets-get-cooking-20100127005508521_640w.jpeg Coming soon from Nintendo: America's Test Kitchen: Let's Get Cooking for the Nintendo DS.

If you were hoping the game would involve a cartoon-like Christopher Kimball swinging through the kitchen by a prehensile bow-tie, you might be disappointed.

This is strictly edutainment of the culinary persuasion. This "game," which features 300 recipes provided by Kimball and company, looks more like a digital cookbook that has been shoe-horned into a gaming platform.

Here are some of the features, according to the official marketing copy (a trailer for the game follows below):

  • Everyone in the family can get involved. The software offers up age-appropriate kitchen tasks, so settings can be adjusted to indicate whether younger helpers are old enough to handle knives or adjust stovetop controls.
  • Everyone involved in the cooking process can rate favorite recipes. When you're looking for a family favorite in the future, a search function makes retrieval easy. Users can find something for every taste and occasion by browsing the 300 recipes by ingredients, difficulty, cooking time or even calorie count.
  • If the cooks in your party don't know a marinade from a marmalade, prompts appear within recipes for specific terms that they might need more information about. Users can then watch helpful how-to videos to show them what to do. Users also can hear audible instructions and use voice commands to navigate the software during the cooking process.
  • If multiple people on your cooking team have Nintendo DS systems, you can wirelessly transmit select recipes to them, even if they don't have a copy of the game card. That lets you concentrate on the entrée while your assistants tackle the side dishes.
  • Just as with a traditional cookbook, users can take notes. The software's handwriting-recognition feature records notes about personal touches users add to their recipes.
  • All the recipes have been created by editors, food scientists, tasters and cookware specialists at America's Test Kitchen. They've taken the guesswork out of finding the best recipes, which leaves you and your assistant chefs to focus on the fun of cooking.



 
Posted by Josh Friedland on Mar 2, 2010 in Gadgets, Games, Shopping List, Television, What's Fresh | Link | | Print this page | Share This



 

Comments

Mar 3, 2010 6:24:49 PM
Posted By: Victor Wong

Looks like they're using the game engine for Personal Training Cooking, and just switched the recipe database. Only real change is a module for multiple game play.

Personal Trainer Cooking was a pretty good seller; the main thing is that the ATK recipe base has to be sufficiently different from the Tsuji Academy (who produced the recipe base for PTC) to be worth the extra purchase.

 

Mar 18, 2010 5:11:22 AM
Posted By: 7.Alejandro_Talavera

I havent none of those 2 games, so which should I buy ?

 

Apr 26, 2010 8:09:16 AM
Posted By: Dale

how can i get in touch with the Ninento people about promoting this game at Taste of Atlanta Oct 23 and 24, 2010 to 40,000 people?

 

Jun 9, 2010 3:26:36 AM
Posted By: mbt

Perhaps there's an all-seafood version out there.

 

Jul 13, 2010 10:09:35 AM
Posted By: Kitchens

Looks like a great way to get kids interested in what they eat. So much processed junk food goes into school lunch boxes, that this has got to be a good idea (provided you buy Nintendo for your kids).

 

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