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.
Product Description
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
Perfect Introduction to Cooking...from a Video Game
The Nintendo DS is an amazing piece of technology with far more potential than to just play video games (though it's certainly ideal for that). Personal Trainer: Cooking is the rare software that pushes the DS in a new direction while putting this potential to great use. You won't find high scores, cute characters or bonus levels in this game, because it's really a cookbook - a really good cookbook.
I was blown away by the quality of production for this game. It's much easier to use than I expected. By default you can select a country from a map and browse popular recipes from that area, or you can search the entire contents by main ingredient, calories or cooking time. All the menus are straightforward and both the hand writing recognition (which you can use to make notes) and voice commands work great, despite loud noises (pots and pans clanking) being picked up erroneously. The included videos are similarly high quality and very helpful if you are unfamiliar with any part of a recipe. You'll also find a glossary, conversions, sustitutions, and a handy timer.
When making one of the nearly 250 recipes included, you'll get a step-by-step walkthrough. It's easy to go through the entire recipe before you start to see what you'll be doing, but it's certaily not neccessary. The ingredients and kitchenware you'll need are listed for you when you bring up the recipe. Just lay out the DS on the counter where you can see both screens and if you need to go back and repeat instructions to any step or go ahead to the next step at any time you can do so with a voice command or using the touch screen. As mentioned, short videos are available to show you many of the required culinary skills. You can bring up the appropriate video for a step (when applicable) with voice command or touchscreen as well.
If you are a seasoned, worldly chef, you'll likely find the production values to be overkill and many recipes too basic. Yet the average home cook will likely find the perfect introduction to at least a few dozen unfamiliar dishes. For the young or inexperienced cook, this game is a cheaper and better pimer than practically any cookbook.
Nintendo DS 
