S gamers have already tried out careers in law and medicine with Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and Trauma Center: Under the Knife. But Majesco and developer Office Create thought people would like to try their hand as a professional chef. What results is a multitude of various cooking mini-games that, while not as polished as other “job” games, still manages to provide quick doses of fun.

Cooking Mama begins with absolutely no setup whatsoever. In fact, there isn’t really a story to be found in the game at all. You just select a recipe and start cooking. Players will start out with only a few dishes to choose from and then unlock new ones as they complete meals. All in all, the game has 76 different meals to make with a stunning variety of cuisines. Create tasty chow like fried chicken, rice dishes, pizza, sandwiches, spaghetti, dumplings, curry, kebabs, udon noodles, soup, shrimp, and even ramen. Yes, this game will definitely make you hungry.

Every dish contains around three to ten steps depending upon its complexity. For example, to make pizza you have to throw a few ingredients into a bowl to make the dough. Next, you knead the dough, roll it out, cut up a tomato, slice up some pepperoni, spread out the sauce, throw on some toppings, and set the baking timer. At the end of every preparation an immaculate picture or your creation is displayed. Unfortunately, your dish looks the same no matter how badly you’ve screwed it up. It would be cool if you could see a crispy burnt steak after a particularly bad session, but this isn’t a huge deal.

As you can see from the variety in the menu, players will have to master quite a lot of preparation techniques. Grate ginger by rubbing it back and forth with the stylus. Chop onions by tapping rapidly on top of the knife. And boil soup almost like a timed music game. Prompts will scroll from right to left and budding chefs will have to stir the pot, lower and raise the heat, throw in food, and even blow in the DS mic to cool things down. You’ll also crack eggs, melt butter in a pan, sauté, fry, tenderize, shape meatballs, and arrange the food nicely on your plate. This is only a sample of the staggering amount of mini-games found in Cooking Mama.

Mama will rate you on every step of the process using bronze, silver, and gold medals (or a straight up “fail”). Once the meal is complete you’ll receive a score from Mama from zero to 100 and an overall medal. Usually a new recipe will unlock upon completion and somehow relate to the meal you just completed. For example, if you make hard boiled eggs you’ll unlock sunny side up eggs then an omlette and finally “crab and egg Chinese style.” Sometimes you’ll also be interrupted during the middle of a recipe to make a variant version of the meal. Say you’re making fried rice. After the rice itself is prepared, you can choose to throw in chicken, crab, or shrimp.

The playful and bright graphics create a cartoony cooking world, yet the food is still realistic enough to make your stomach growl. Music comes mostly from an old-timey piano straight out of a wild west whiskey saloon. Not a whole lot of variety here, but the tunes manage to fade into the background easily with little to no annoyance.

As far as complaints go, I really wish Cooking Mama had some sort of wacky story to go along with it. Who the hell is Mama and why am I making all of this food? We’ll never know, apparently. Trauma Center could have been just a bunch of surgery mini-games, but because the creators tied in some doctor drama, the game has a fair share of character that you can latch onto. What if you worked at a restaurant and a busload of kids came in and you had to make 15 cheeseburgers in two minutes? It could be cool. Also, some of the mini-games are frustratingly hit or miss as to whether they register your movements (peeling, I’m looking in your general direction). Finally, it would be cool if the game included real life recipes for those who are inspired to try them. Maybe Majesco could start a Cooking Mama recipe website where players can search out their favorite dishes to make at home.

But I’m willing to overlook many of Cooking Mama’s flaws simply because it’s so cheap. So what if getting gold medals on every recipe results in absolutely nothing? The game only costs $20 and there is plenty of bite sized fun to be had. If you’re a big fan of the other “job” DS games, you may want to pick up Cooking Mama on September 12. It’s not the deepest game out there, but the mini-games are among the best on the system.