Personal Trainer: Cooking
Binding : Video Game
ProductGroup : Video Games
Manufacturer : Nintendo
Brand : Nintendo
Label : Nintendo
Publisher : Nintendo
Model : NTR P CNVE
Platform : Nintendo DS
Studio : Nintendo
ReleaseDate : 2008-11-24
Lowest Used Price: USD $9.99
Lowest New Price: USD $9.99
- For Play on Your Nintendo DS
- Published by Nintendo
- Single Player Capability
- Game Sub-Genre: Educational
Personal Trainer: Cooking brings gourmet cooking from around the globe to your Nintendo DS. It features a DS Chef, your own private cooking instructor who talks you through 245+ recipes from over 30 countries worldwide. It's a combination of interactive cookbook and live cooking demonstration that'll have you cooking like a pro, even if you've never lifted a ladle before. With so many recipes, you can find something new and tasty to make no matter what you're in the mood for. You can search a map by country to find regional dishes or select options for low-calorie foods, specific ingredients or short cooking times. Each recipe contains step-by-step directions and photos to make it possible to prepare dishes you've never tried before. Use the stylus or simple voice commands to "turn the page." Hands covered in batter? Keep your DS clean using voice commands to continue to the next page, repeat a step, go back, and more. A tap of the touch screen lets you adjust the serving size automatically, and users can write and save cooking notes, just as they would in a paper recipe book. Recipes include photos of the dish as well as instructional videos on how to perform different cooking techniques, such as how to chop an onion or clean a fish. Users can access a handy reference function to explain unfamiliar terms and cooking techniques when they appear. The software includes a timer and calculator, as well as a search function to help you find what you're looking for. Cooking Guide also includes an ingredient checklist to use as a shopping list. Just put a ? mark next to the items you need and bring your Nintendo DS to the grocery store. You and the Chef will collaborate on a wide variety of recipes, with videos of techniques, explanations of ingredients, and expert advice. With its innovative interface and the interactivity that only the DS can provide, it's a perfect learning tool for the budding chef. As you browse recip
Amazon.com
Personal Trainer: Cooking brings gourmet cooking from around the globe to your Nintendo DS. It features a DS Chef, your own private cooking instructor who talks you through 245+ recipes from more than 30 countries worldwide. It's a combination of interactive cookbook and live cooking demonstration that'll have you cooking like a pro, even if you've never lifted a ladle before.
- You and the Chef will collaborate on a wide variety of recipes, with videos of techniques, explanations of ingredients and expert advice. With its innovative interface and the interactivity that only the DS can provide, it's a perfect learning tool for the budding chef.
- As you browse recipes, just tap a box to mark ingredients you need to buy. The DS will automatically store them in your in-game shopping list. Later you can take your DS to the store and check off the ingredients as you put them in your cart.
- Search for recipes by ingredients, calorie count, cooking time, difficulty and more.
- Hands covered in batter? Keep your DS clean using voice commands to continue to the next page, repeat a step, go back and more.
About the game: The first thing to do is select a recipe. With 245+ to choose from, Personal Trainer: Cooking makes it easy to find what you're looking for by helping you browse by country, ingredients, difficulty, cooking time, cooking technique or even calorie count. Once you've found something that looks tasty, take a look at the ingredients. Out of butter or need to buy some cumin? Just tap them with the stylus to automatically add the ingredients to your Shopping List. Making several dishes tonight? Just keep tapping ingredients - your Shopping List keeps it all in one place for you. Now that you've got your ingredients, it's time to start cooking. The DS Chef is there with you, talking you through every step along the way. Don't know how to fillet a trout? Watch the demonstration video when you get to that step. Didn't quite catch the last step? Just say "Repeat," and the Chef will explain it again. You can pause the recipe at any time to consult the Cooking A-Z guide, and prompts will appear within recipes for specific terms you might need more information about.
Becoming a Better Cook: When you finish each recipe, you put a stamp on the in-game calendar, marking what you've made and when you made it. Later, you can search by whether or not you've made a dish before, allowing you to perfect your technique on a particular recipe, or keep expanding your culinary horizons. With an extensive in-game reference of cooking terms, pictures and demonstration videos, you can tailor your cooking experience to your level of skill, then watch that skill grow as you keep cooking.
Special Input Options: The game can be controlled entirely with the stylus, for maximum accessibility. When your hands are full, covered in cookie batter or otherwise unavailable, all of the in-recipe commands can be given by speaking to the DS microphone. The keyword search function uses handwriting recognition, so you can simply write out that you're looking for a "sweet" something. Finally, that same handwriting recognition is used to make notes on recipes. If you want to remember to reduce the salt, or simply that this recipe was especially tasty, the software takes the same role as the handwritten note in a cookbook.
Cooking (2009-06-29)
I bought 1 for my 10 year old granddaugher and she loved it very much. She has been making the dinners for her family. I also bought one for a friend as a Christmas suprise gift and she also enjoys it and shares it with her neice who is 10.
I love gifts that I use more than the person I gave it too. (2009-06-09)
My girlfriend left this on a shelf for three weeks after I bought it and didn't want to cook me S--T even though she promised she would cook more often (HA!). So I cracked it open and it turns out to be really helpful! Even if you don't make the recipes you will still find this pretty useful around the kitchen. I use it more as a guide for finding complimentary flavors.
GREAT FOR WANTING TO COOK SOMETHING NEW (2009-05-17)
I love this game. I've made the Bucatini with tomato and pancetta and it came out great. I would definitely recommend purchasing this cooking game. What intrigued me was the different type of recipeds from around the world. I always want to cook something new and different and if you do too then this is the game for you.
Made me WANT to cook (2009-05-14)
I am the sort that makes instant ramen or boxes of macaroni for dinner, because I, a) don't want to think up a menu, b) feel tired and/or lazy, so resort to frozen pre-packaged meals, or d)look at my cookbook and turn away sighing, because it seems overwhelming and I don't know where to start.
This "game" is amazing. You don't have trouble coming up with an entire meal that goes together, because you can search by country, and it'll also tell you if the dish is a side dish, dessert, etc. The pictures are so beautiful and appetizing, it actually seems fun(!) to go grocery shopping for the ingredients instead of grabbing a bag of frozen burritos, for example. Also, because the steps to each recipe are so simply laid out, and the "cookbook" is so tiny, I feel more in control and less overwhelmed than I do when pulling out my ginormous, traditional, old cookbook.
I have only had this game for a week and I've already made the Sugar Crepes and Australian Meat Pie. I am excited to try the Udon Noodle Soup and Sushi recipes next! Take THAT cup-o-noodle!
Good as a recipe book, and not much else (2009-05-11)
This was one of the first few applications for the DS that was not a game. There aren't any fun activities in this application, just step by step recipes, and if that's what you're looking for, then you may have found it.
Using the application is fairly easy: on first run, it creates a profile for the user that will keep track of ratings and shopping lists and recipes cooked (and perhaps other information). This process takes a few minutes, but this is a 1 time operation. From here, the user simply browses recipes in one of several ways (by region, alphabetically, by ingredient (and maybe by course). The user then selects a recipe and starts cooking!
On first glance, everything seems great--it's like having a second person in the kitchen that only tells you what to do next. The problem is really how it's handled though. The speech recognition is only okay. It'll respond correctly to "next" and "okay" and maybe even "got it", but it'll also respond to things like "bad" and "okra." In fact, if there's already going to be someone else in the kitchen, you'll be triggering the "okay" and "back" often.
And that's basically the only complaint that can be made about this application. The speech coming out of the DS is easy to hear, easy to understand. The recipes turn out well, and there's a wide selection of recipes for each kind of eater. The nice thing is that you can turn off the speech recognition (and I highly recommend doing so).
The only other remark to make is that this suffers the same problem as cookbook these days (and this really is just an electronic cookbook), and that's that you can find recipes everywhere on the internet for free. I'd really only recommend this to a budding chef that already has a DS. If you don't have a DS, you're probably better off looking elsewhere for a cookbook.
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