"A cheesy, sub-par platformer"

When I first got this game, I thought it would be kind of like a platform Iron Chef. I was totally wrong. Here are the ratings.

GRAPHICS: 7/10

The game's graphics aren't bad, but there's a sense that the graphics are all the developers cared about when making this game. The sprites are well rendered, and the backgrounds look nice. Your character's animation is lively and smooth. On the minus side, the graphics look a bit overdone. It seems that too much effort was put into making this game look 16-bit quality. (They failed, too.) The best looking part of the game is the mini game ''Catch the Fish'', where the colors are nice and bright. That one scene is where this game really shines, graphics-wise.

SOUND: 6/10

The game's music is nothing to cheer about. It gets old after a while, and there isn't much variety in the music. The sound effects are your standard stuff, nothing too outstanding there. The music brings the score down.

GAMEPLAY: 3/10

This is where it gets bad. The premise of the game is that you are a chef, and you go around whomping various anthropromorphized food items with a frying pan. Whoopee. The game play is nearly impossible at some points. For example, in Stage 2, there are these enemy apples which split up into slices and launch at you. It is very difficult to avoid the apple slices. To add to the frustration, you also have to dodge falling bolts of electricity from a chandelier while trying to avoid the apples. You have to do this about 4 times in a row. The boss battles are too easy. The first boss can only take 6 hits. If you have the spoon, it'll be dead in less than 10 seconds.

CONTROL: 4/10

The play control is too slow. Your chef has no ''run'' button to speak of. You have to keep on walking everywhere. You only have one attack per weapon, and you can forget about keeping your special weapons after getting hit. Your chef cannot jump high at all. The control is not difficult, just frustrating.

PLOT: 3/10

The plot is: an evil chef named Ohdove has taken over your restaurant. That's it. How much worse can you get?!?

OVERALL: 4

This game plays quite a bit like Sega's forgotten Tempo Jr, only minus the bright colors. The game's high point is the Catch the Fish minigame, which lasts for about 30 seconds, but has some sweet graphics. (For the NES) The actual game's pastel atmosphere, repetitive gameplay and nearly impossible sections make this restaurant a good one to miss.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/15/01, Updated 02/15/01