Personal Trainer: Cooking is a training title that 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.

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.

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.

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.

Features :

• 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.

Personal Trainer: Cooking will launch on Nov. 24, 2008.