There have been over 20 Cooking Mama games, including spin-offs, since Mama first blessed our Nintendo DS in 2006. As one might imagine for a game with so many installments and spin-off titles, the Cooking Mama series has had a lot of ups and downs. Yet between lackluster sequels and bizarre forays into distinctly non-cooking adventures, Cooking Mama has always maintained its charm.
Almost two decades later, Cooking Mama has come a long way from her humble origins. Whether cute or even a little cursed, here are some of the best Cooking Mama games released.
10 Cooking Mama: Let's Cook
Considering Cooking Mama's origins on the Nintendo DS, an adaptation to mobile seems only natural. Cooking Mama: Let's Cook includes some creative mini-game options to diversify the gameplay, including fishing, farming, and caring for livestock.
Like some older Cooking Mama games, there is even a "restaurant tycoon" element that lets you sell your recipe creations to customers.
9 Gardening Mama
Gardening Mama takes the rather simplistic mechanics of the original and gives it a floral spin. Much like the classic Cooking Mama, in this gardening spin-off, Mama coaches you through the process of maintaining your own home garden.
Complete a smattering of different mini-games and grow your very own flowers and veggies. Gardening Mama is a perfect transition for anyone who fell in love with the original Cooking Mama for Nintendo DS.
8 Camping Mama: Outdoor Adventures
A strange RPG twist on the Cooking Mama saga entered the scene in 2011 with Camping Mama: Outdoor Adventures for the Nintendo DS. Camping Mama completely forwent the classic Cooking Mama mini-game mechanics and instead went all-in on creating it's very own "Cooking Mama World".
While this installment was likely far from what fans were expecting, you have to appreciate the attempt to give Cooking Mama its own lore and deviating so far from the classic formula.
7 Cooking Mama: Cookstar
It had been years since we had our last "true" Cooking Mama game, so fans were obviously excited about the very first Cooking Mama game to come to the Nintendo Switch. Cooking Mama: Cookstar has all the classic mechanics from previous games; however, it attempts to modernize itself, not by adding new mechanics or mini-games, but by giving Cooking Mama a social media influencer flavor.
Featuring all-new "Instagrammable" recipes, photo filters, and a slightly bizarre Facebook-style rating system, Cooking Mama: Cookstar was a fun new addition to the series but fell a little off the mark.
6 Cooking Mama: Cook-Off
The first Cooking Mama game to be released for the Wii attempted to hone in on the competitive challenges introduced in Cooking Mama 2 by upping the scale and making it international. Besides the basic cooking mode, Cook-Off had a "Friends and Foods of the World" mode where you could face off against others online from around the globe.
While Cooking Mama games have often included recipes from all over the world, it was a nice touch to call attention to the origins of each recipe's cuisine.
5 Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop
Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop didn't mess around when it came to making world-class desserts. While at its core, this sequel to Cooking Mama simply took the formula and slapped a bakery theme on it, the coolest thing about Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop was learning about new sweets you might never have heard of.
Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop also introduced a shop management mini-game, in which you got to display the recipes you made with Mama in your very own sweet shop to sell to customers in exchange for cosmetics currency.
4 Babysitting Mama
Babysitting Mama came with its very own baby doll and instructions on how to insert your Wii Remote inside the baby in order to play. Yep. In perhaps what was the most bizarre spin-off to the Cooking Mama series, Babysitting Mama adapted its mini-game mechanics to none other than childcare.
It's debatable whether Babysitting Mama succeeded in teaching the next generation how best to bounce, burp, and feed a baby. However, it certainly instilled the lesson to never, ever, under any circumstance, shake the baby.
3 Cooking Mama (DS)
You can never forget the classics. The very first Cooking Mama game brought a whole new casual and yet chaotic feel to the Nintendo DS. It might not have had any of the bells and whistles of future Cooking Mama installments, but there were dozens of recipes to learn, and even a "Let's Combine" mode that allowed you to unlock new recipes by combining old ones.
It's also interesting to note that Mama didn't have any voice lines in her very first game. It wouldn't be until later that we would be introduced to the cheery exclamations that we had performed "even better than Mama!"
2 Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends
As far as sequels go, Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends was the perfect follow-up to the start of the series. This game not only added plenty of new recipes, but introduced a new "Challenge Mode" for cooking perfectionists, plus a "Cooking Contest Mode" where you could compete with four of your friends!
Not to mention, this was the game to introduce the rest of Mama's family and the "Cooking Mama lore", if you will. Truly a fun spin on what was already a pretty perfect game.
1 Cooking Mama 5
Based on the sheer amount of modes included in Cooking Mama 5, this sequel was one of the biggest additions to the series yet. Besides keeping the challenge mode, called "Cooking Dojo", there were other modes to play, new mini-games — such as running "Mama's Burger Shop" — farming ingredients, doing chores with Mama, or even playing some math and word games in "Let's Study".
Of all the Cooking Mama games, Cooking Mama 5 certainly had the most range, with a little bit of something for every kind of casual gamer.