Cooking Mama and the Mama-verse

[Music] I love virtual food I like real food too of course but there's something about the cartoony style of animated food that really gives it a special novelty quality making it look way more appetizing delicious and usually more shiny than food in real life even more than looking at virtual food though I love to make it I was a pretty avid Flash game player back in the day before Adobe pulled the plug on half of the internet and for some reason some of the games I couldn't get enough of were anything that involved creating and preparing food for anything from Burger flipping to cake making I would do whatever it took to get my hands on that sweet pixelated Cuisine even if it meant installing a virus on the family computer when trying to download Cake Mania while these games were usually pretty fun and gave me a good dose of that virtual food goodness that I was after a lot of online games have been known to be pretty Limited in their designs one can only flip a virtual Krabby Patty with the click of a mouse so many times before it starts to lose its magic I mean where's the action where were the controls that made it really feel like I was working a day at the Krusty Krab for minimum wage maybe I was the only one who wanted to experience that specific scenario but I wasn't the only one who wanted a more interactive food-based gaming experience while minimum wage crusty Krab simulator was unfortunately never produced something close enough was released in 2006 a game called Cooking Mama for the Nintendo DS the Nintendo DS was marketed as a new and Innovative handheld console that allowed users to play intuitively and following the release of the Nintendo DS Lite a Slimmer version of the DS Cooking Mama was around found as a new game to really play into that marketing no longer would burgers be flipped with only a boring Mouse click instead players could now spin tap and slice their stylus around the DS's touchscreen to feel more involved and in charge of the spicy cooking action it was also fun even when you weren't making something spicy cooking Mama's gameplay is centered around a set of mini-games sometimes called micro games because of their short time frames to complete a task the mini games involve different stages of food prep from chopping and peeling to mixing and baking the 96 different recipes that are featured in the game range from Basics like simple fried eggs and sandwiches to more complex dishes like stews and steaks and if you want to play Cooking Mama on super simple mode you can even make a cup of instant Ramen that only requires one Mini-Game of pouring boiling water into the cup I'm definitely gonna reference this next time someone asks if I'm a real gamer the recipe in the game tend to follow the steps that a real recipe would though with generally simplified steps as most mini games have a time limit of only 10 seconds the short timer gives the game a more urgent and fast-paced feel somewhat simulating a real kitchen I guess but mostly just adding an extra element to the overall simplistic gameplay even with its short timers and simple mechanics the game is arguably most well known for its japanese-centric design style featuring Whimsical flourishes cute Kawaii details and a Chibi Anime inspired design for the main character herself known as simply mama mama has no real name no age and is made to exist as a kind motherly figure that teaches the player how to cook and offer help even after making a mistake even if she's really pissed about you making a mistake if a player performs a level poorly enough or just fails altogether mama will get a little UPS head but will almost always still maintain that there's a way to fix it there's this one voice clip that plays When Mama's upset where she says this you're not mine which is apparently her saying do not mind if my source is correct but I don't really know how credible of a source The Cooking Mama fan Wiki is so don't take my word for it there's been some debate over what the voice clip actually says over the years with different people hearing different things and I always thought she was saying good not mine like yeah that's good but it's not as good as mine or just saying that she's glad that my burned pastry wasn't comparable to her cooking or something I don't know it made sense in my head as a kid let me know what you thought mama was berating you with it probably made more sense than what I thought despite the fiery eyes and the slightly incoherent voice clips that were sometimes a little discouraging or just strange the varied and exaggerated Expressions made by mama are what arguably fully drove the original DS game and its appeal instead of being just another cooking simulator even one with new high-tech touchscreen controls Mama's character helped to create a light-hearted and fun atmosphere even when cracking an egg with a stylus just perfectly enough to not smash it sometimes felt a little impossible after the initial Cooking Mama game released on Diaz a spin-off game called Cooking Mama cook-off was released for the Nintendo Wii and wow if you thought Burger flipping was hard before mixing The Cooking Mama mechanics and time constraints with the motion controls of the Wii took the difficulty to a new level the gameplay for this spin-off game pretty much stayed the same as the first keeping the recipes and their required steps relatively simple but although the mini games and Mama appear the same the game is controlled using a Wii remote which is pretty different from holding a stylus and in addition to new recipes and new controls Cooking Mama on the Wii offered a new game mode that let players compete against each other at the same time in the same head-to-head Mini-Game I played Cooking Mama cook-off at a friend's birthday party one year which didn't end up turning out as wholesome as Mama's smiling face on the box art made us believe it would be a group of eight-year-olds were not equipped with enough patience or likely also brain power at that age to be able to nail each minigame even when only doing something as simple as heating popcorn over a stove I know that the Wii has had some criticisms over the years for its Wii remote controls sometimes being both overly sensitive and not responsive enough when playing certain games but if you've ever lost to Matt the destroyer in Wii Sports due to the bad controls I'm here to tell you that the defeat you felt just didn't compare to the way losing against another elementary school girl felt during this birthday party chopping felt like a chore mixing was either too slow or too fast and cracking an egg delicately enough was next to Impossible the cook-off was so heated pun intended it felt more tense and competitive than a game of Mario Kart which I think is saying something there was definitely a lot more screaming and hurt feelings that night than I think any anyone had expected though I have to say seeing the steam float off of the spaghetti with Squid Ink or the wobble of the Custard in the end still felt mostly worth it but maybe that was just me that virtual food gets me every time a couple more cooking based spin-offs of Cooking Mama would come out within the next few years keeping the same sort of formula as with the previous games while introducing new recipes and subtly improving the art style and Graphics a bit along the way but repeating what's essentially the same games over and over can only take a franchise so far mama was on the verge of getting stale and she needed to Branch out into something new and Branch out she did in the 2009 DS game Gardening Mama Gardening Mama is exactly what it seems like the original Cooking Mama gameplay only reformatted for gardening tasks instead of cooking planting watering pruning and harvesting could now be done by Avid outdoor gardeners from the comfort of the indoors with Mama and her only slightly vacant looking stare around 2 accompany them along the way the mini-games were generally improved upon with this gardening spin-off or at the very least made more varied as instead of only mixing or crying while trying to crack an egg with a Wii remote each Mini-Game had all new actions introduced like digging and spreading seeds this continuation and the general success of the franchise didn't go unnoticed by other game makers at the time and of course inspired a few parodies and knockoffs one pretty controversial parody was made by the animal rights activism group Peta who although praised Gardening Mama for being vegan friendly also criticized Cooking Mama for allegedly promoting animal cruelty and eating meat it featured graphic depictions of a Thanksgiving turkey preparation and took some creative Liberties to really drive home their points it's hard to say whether the pita parody did end up accomplishing their goal of converting anyone to veganism but fortunately it didn't manage to take Cooking Mama down at all and gave the franchise some free advertising in the process too for the activists who wanted to boycott not just Cooking Mama but cooking games altogether though a game that wasn't a parody but a knockoff version of the original game was made by Activision in 2009 called science Papa it was pretty clearly inspired by or more or less just a blatant rip-off of Cooking Mama but appealed to hobbyists that didn't want to spend time cooking lame custards and instant Ramen and instead wanted to feel cool beakers and make bombs Cooking Mama was as you might have guessed a bit annoyed by this attempt to steal some of her Thunder and went as far as to provide a direct response to science Papa herself and not without a few Garden related puns for what I assume was extra Gardening Mama promotion while doing it so you want some dirt on science Papa to Splash on your site I'll shovel it we dated briefly when he had much better hair and now he clearly wants a piece of the best-selling Pie by associating himself with an incredibly successful and I'll emphasize happily married woman frankly he never appreciated my cooking and I grew weary of his tedious experiments you want real mind-bending science go figure out how to make Toulouse castle for your next dinner party of 20 and let me know how it goes Papa dang I knew Mama could be kind of chaotic sometimes but with the occasional active flames in her eyes and all but this really takes it to a whole new level clearly The Cooking Mama developers didn't take a rip off very lightly and wanted to hit science Papa right where it hurts in his pair and in his French cuisine cooking ability in addition to going above and beyond to block out the haters I really appreciate that this response adds a bit of spice to the relatively lacking Cooking Mama lure of this series although Mama herself doesn't have much in the way of backstory or personality beyond having a few hobbies that she continues to turn into Mini-Game series she does have a husband and even two kids and a dog her husband known only as Papa appeared in the second Cooking Mama game and her children Ichigo and Ringo and dog Max were featured in different games later on I am realizing now that Mama might have been called Mama even before she had kids which kind of creates more questions than it answers Beyond this though that's kind of where the mama Lord tapers off given that the games and all their playstyles are so simplistic it's understandable that there wouldn't be a whole lot to the characters in The Games Beyond just a couple of cute quirks and Designs but still hearing about Mama's past romances and well-crafted insults just breeds that little bit of extra life into her character that you might not have even realized was missing and makes me at least want to hear more after venturing into gardening and seeing some success with the new hobby The Cooking Mama series eventually also expanded into other interests like crafting and camping crafting mama was pretty similar to the other games before it as far as the style of the fast-paced mini-games went featuring different crafts like Pottery jewelry making and woodworking showing everyone that Mama can do it all Papa really is a lucky man camping Mama changed the format of the game a bit by offering the regular expected mini-games but also a game mode that had players navigate as one of Mama's kids and explore the island to collect items The Venture into new game modes and outdoorsy Hobbies got a pretty decent response if these YouTube comments on the game's trailer are anything to go by 38 exciting levels it's intense more like intense oh my God I'm hypnotized must cook all night and jump all day dies did it say camping mama oh my God wow Mama sure can jump really really high WTF was that by the way wow both the crafting and the camping spin-off sure seem like a lot of fun well guess it's time to move on to okay fine we'll talk about babysitting mama babysitting mama was yet another spin-off game that as you might have guessed introduced players to yet another one of Mama's Hobbies off of her growing list of interests babysitting following the trend of the rest of the Mama games babysitting mama was full of mini games surrounding the theme of babysitting and child care having players feed burp Rock and dance with their respective baby among other things the game itself isn't glaringly terrible on its own or anything but I myself just have a few weird feelings about it while some might find the babies featured in the game to be pretty cute to me they just kind of look slightly off maybe it's their weirdly proportioned bodies complete with Stumpy legs or May maybe it's their overly large heads that aren't out of line with the rest of the character designs in the series but somehow look extra alien and bulbous when attached onto tiny babies whatever it is I think most of my feelings about babysitting Mama's babies are mostly aimed towards this creature babysitting mama was made for the Wii and it took the Hands-On interactive approach of the other games in the series to the next level instead of slicing with a stylus or mixing with a Wii remote the Wii remote was treated as the baby itself throughout most of the mini-games and this little guy was sold as an accessory that the Wii remote would fit into the back of while playing making the immersion and his unfortunate portrayed sentience all the more real while I can't as easily pin down why the animated in-game babies strike me as a little bit off I can definitely tell you why accessory baby makes me feel some type of way aside from his stubby little arms and legs and the way that he looks like an uncooked whole chicken with his diaper off accessory baby's head is what does it for me the most it's too round his eyes are too big and his sly little smile makes it look like he's up to something nefarious I don't think I've ever actively used the word nefarious before but this seems like a suitable time to do so to sum it all up despite the cuteness that the producers of this baby were obviously trying to go for the best that accessory baby does for me at least is just give me an uncanny valley vacant potentially slightly possessed Vibe and if all of that wasn't enough when the Wii remote is put into the baby's back the game is played with a wired nunchuck add-on which kind of just makes it look like accessory baby has some sort of alien umbilical cord coming out of its spine am I going a little overboard with the baby hate I'm not the only one who feels this way but maybe I could tone it down a little I just have a slight disdain for not only babysitting mama but for the other entire host of of baby care related games that were also popping up all over the place around this time maybe I'll make a separate video about those because there's weirdly a lot of them and although they don't feature accessory baby they still creep me out after Babysitting Mama returned to what she knows best cooking another Gardening Mama sequel was made in 2013 but other than that three more cooking games were made over the years after accessory baby hit the market the franchise also expanded with merchandise a mascot and mobile and Facebook versions of the original game I also even found a couple of entries across different sites that seem to allude to the existence of a Cooking Mama animated series though I'm not convinced it's actually a thing because like I mentioned before the Cooking Mama Wiki of all things maybe isn't the best credible information Source one site describes the show as a Sci-Fi comedy aired on HBO Max that features a very star-studded cast list and a very elaborate breakdown of episodes and villains complete with a questionable catchphrase from Mama's young children a separate fan Wiki site though claims that the show was a cooking action comedy that aired between 2008 and 2016 on Cartoon Network the cast list is just as detailed and expansive and there are mentions of every episode name and even a death total for each of the characters so yeah clearly both of these entries are fan made predictions or imaginings of what a Cooking Mama animated series might look like but whether real or very elaborately made up the interest in a Cooking Mama show alone shows that Mama has built a pretty well-known and successful name for herself over the years and that her fans are interested in the expansion of the brand and the universe in which she lives in there are some real animated shorts on the official Cooking Mama website that do show a few of the family's adventures together but they're pretty lacking and are made more for ocean then entertainment and that seems to be as close to a full series as anyone will get speaking of the expansion of the series the current state of the Cooking Mama universe is kind of Uncertain as the newest main installment of the series that was released for the switch in 2020 Cooking Mama cook star was later removed due to legal issues between the Publishers and the owners of the brand it's been a continuing legal battle since then with a second release in 2021 that led to the game being ruled as an unauthorized bootleg game causing it to be taken down all over again the game being an unofficial release makes sense considering that a fair amount of reviews of the game were pretty negative overall claiming that there wasn't enough new content and that some of the controls and features didn't really work correctly with cookstar being taken off the menu pun intended again the current state of the series seems to be a bit up in the air although there was a new Cooking Mama game released in 2022 exclusively for iOS through the Apple arcade as far as a new Mainline game goes the series seems to be on a bit of a Hiatus I guess if you're still in the market for a new or different experience while the mainline Cooking Mama games are on hold maybe you could play with the next best virtual food chef on the market everyone's favorite cooking papa no not that one no he does science remember yep that one maybe you've heard of them despite the slight pause on the series it's clear that mama and her family not you have come a long way since the beginning in 2006. while Cooking Mama games aren't the most detailed or complex of cooking simulators that are out there the character is still cute the premise is still fun and the virtual food still looks delicious a huge thank you to Kayla Geary Dylan Webb Kevin Evans M we paper Sam Sarah the Goomba mattress mondor and the rest of my patrons for supporting me let me know what recipes you think we should include in our own bootleg Cooking Mama game for legal reasons that was a joke thank you foreign [Music]

Channel: Dream Jelly

Views: 383,005

Keywords: cooking mama, cooking mama game, cooking mama ds, cooking mama wii, cooking mama cookstar, cooking mama cookstar controversy, cooking mama cookstar switch, cooking mama cookstar banned, cooking mama nintendo ds, cooking mama video game, gardening mama, crafting mama, camping mama, babysitting mama, science papa, cooking mama switch, cooking mama nintendo switch, cooking mama mascot, cooking mama recipe, cooking mama kids, cooking mama papa, cooking mama recipes, mama

Id: VTswSkF91KA

Length: 20min 14sec (1214 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 11 2023