Ore No Ryouri [PSOne Books]

You play the part of a young boy who is hailed as the most accomplished chef in the Coo-Kingdom, and not undeservedly: year after year, you have been the top winner in the kingdom's annual Iron Chef-like cooking contest. One day, as you are relaxing at the beach, a jealous rival appears: Kaeru, a frog who has consistently been the runner-up in every one of those contests. He and his Gero-Gero Gang (a motley mix of bad guys, including a robot and a flower) want to challenge you to a final cooking competition, to be held at 8 different restaurants in the capital city. As a competitive type yourself, you accept and begin your journey across the city's restaurants, where you will train with your fellow chef friends in order to defeat Kaeru and his gang! Once customers start coming into the restaurant, their orders will begin to accrue on the side of the screen. After selecting the order you want to fill, a wide variety of cooking-oriented mini games must be quickly completed before you can prepare the food in question. Each individual event and activity is scored from 1 to 10, with a number of indicators letting you know when you've poured just enough beer into the glass or your noodles have the preferred firmness. Likewise, points will be deducted if you cut your fingers when chopping or burn your french fries. Tougher cuisines will require more steps, will offer fewer chances for chaining, and will require speed, precision, and careful resource management in order for you to advance. In addition to cooking tasks, a number of other, more detrimental, events can occur.