“Order Up!” for Wii: uh-oh.

Is it plagiarism when the original concept isn’t all that…erm…original to begin with?

I was pretty surprised to hear about the new Wii game, called “Order Up!” as it is very similar to Ore no Ryomi 2. Let’s list a few details:

-You start off as a cook taking orders at a restaurant, using different recipes.
-You have up to four tickets at a time waiting for you, and you have different ratings based on how you cook the food (good, bad, perfect, etc.)
-You must wash dishes and other minigames to keep the health inspector happy
-The ultimate goal is to appear on a cooking TV show and showcase your talents

Thankfully, that’s where the similarities end. There’s lots of interesting features to Order Up! that it’s not really a rip-off of ONR2 (which itself was a rip-off of Ore no Ryouri for the PS1) but more of a slower paced restaurant sim. It’s an interesting game, and it just shows how cooking games in general are taking off (Iron Chef America and Hell’s Kitchen and Cooking Mama are some other cooking sims headed to Wii). Take a look:




If anything, it just proves how ripe the cooking/restaurant genre really is. There’s so much untapped potential here, and even with this game released I feel there’s still more gold to mine from it. Still, it’s interesting to see a new take on what was a non-existent genre just a few years ago.

9 Commentsto “Order Up!” for Wii: uh-oh.

  1. Dale_Fan3 says:

    That game looks pretty neat. It might just hold us over until ONR3.

  2. joe_042293 says:

    There are other similarities to ONR2 – the morning newspaper, the order slip thing which tells you how to make the food, the tips depending on the food’s quality…

    I hope there’s a Special Thanks to David Galindo there somewhere… =D

    Looks good, I’d buy it if I had a Wii.

  3. Spaceoff says:

    Looks way too repetative, ONR2 was more fun 😛

  4. Before I saw the video, I was thinking to myself; “Why Oh Why does the Wii get all these crappy childish cooking games!!! I’m sick of it!” But after seeing the video, it doesn’t look so bad. Whether I buy it or not is a completely different story. However, I think if it had online, I might be sold. 🙂

  5. minmay says:

    “And you have to fry whatever these things are”

    ++That guy.

  6. Dale_Fan3 says:

    It’s too bad it doesn’t have co-op. That would be really great.

  7. T.Hi says:

    You mentioned “Cooking Mama” in the original post and this game seems to resemble it, too. My son had the Nintendo DS version.

  8. chubigans says:

    The funny thing about Ore no Ryomi is that it’s not really about the cooking, but about the process of running a restaurant. My theory: the fundamental tasks of cutting onions, grating cheese, etc. is not all that entertaining. It’s keeping up with the restaurant that’s a lot of fun.
    Then again, I have yet to play Cooking Mama or this game shown here. T.Hi, what do you think of Cooking Mama (or anyone else who’s played it)?

  9. I’ve played Cooking Mama (DS), it really is geared towards the touch motion features of the DS, and from what I’ve played (about 30 minutes), it just felt like a novelty tech engine. I can’t imagine what it would be like for the Wii, or even (if it was released) the PC for that matter too. I can’t imagine it being much fun at all.

    As you might have gathered from my synopsis, I don’t think very highly of it. But why should I be the judge, its worth a play at least.