Cooking Mama: Cookstar
A Cooking Mama game pulled amid legal disputes.
Cooking Mama: Cookstar is a cooking simulation minigame collection and the series' unofficial sixth title. It marked the first series entry since 2014's Cooking Mama 5: Bon Appétit!, and the first on a home console since Cooking Mama: World Kitchen (2008) or Babysitting Mama (2010). The game launched early on the Nintendo Switch eShop on March 26, 2020, but was removed hours later due to a legal dispute between publisher Planet Entertainment and IP owner Office Create.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- 1st Playable Productions
- Series
- Cooking Mama
- Composer
- Sara Sakurai
- Satoshi Okubo
- Masayoshi Ishi
- Engine
- Unity
- Genre
- Simulation, minigame
- Modes
- Single-player
- Platforms
- Nintendo Switch; PlayStation 4
Facts from the source article.
Development
Announced in August 2019 as Cooking Mama: Coming Home to Mama, the game was slated for a Q3 2019 release. Its publisher promoted it as the first major console game to use blockchain technology for digital rights management, but never provided further details, and the final release contains no blockchain features. American developer 1st Playable Productions handled the project, later scrubbing all references to it from their website.
Release
The game ostensibly released on March 31, 2020, but was briefly made available on the Nintendo Switch eShop and then pulled shortly after. An announced PlayStation 4 version was not released at the time despite listings on storefronts. Office Create stated that Planet Entertainment was not authorized to release Cooking Mama games on that platform. Unconfirmed rumors that the game acted as a cryptocurrency miner emerged; 1st Playable responded that blockchain implementation was only hypothetical and that the removal was due to a legal dispute. Office Create stated it had terminated Planet's license on March 30, 2020, after which Planet started selling the game. A full North American release occurred in 2021 on both Switch and PS4. In November 2022, Office Create announced it had won its legal battle and the game was removed from sale. After the lawsuit, a spinoff titled Yum Yum Cookstar was released on multiple platforms, playing similarly but with a different cast, art style, voice acting, and dialog by National Lampoon staff, with sound and music by Nile Rodgers.
Reception
The Nintendo Switch version received generally unfavorable reviews on Metacritic. Travis Northup of IGN gave it 3 out of 10, praising the detailed recipes but criticizing the monotonous gameplay, poor motion controls, nightmarish voice acting, and lack of progression. Conversely, TheGamer's Bella Blondeau gave it 4 out of 5, praising the variety, content, nuance in mechanics, photo mode, and Yoko Nishino's performance as Mama. PETA praised the game for including a vegetarian mode.
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