Ore no Ryomi was one of the earliest cooking games that I ever saw for the PC. David Galindo was inspired years ago by a Japanese import game on a demo disk that came in Playstation Magazine. That game was called Ore no Ryouri (developed by Argent for the PS1) but it never saw release in the US despite being hugely popular in Japan. Galindo made a fan PC game using much more hand-drawn sprites and much more simplified play and released it into the wild as shareware.

Fast forward to today, and there are countless cooking games of all sorts out there – and it’s a very popular genre. But Ore no Ryomi is still one of my favorites. I recommend going and downloading a copy from Vertigo Gaming. It’s freeware, so you have nothing to lose – and it’s a lot of fun!

Fast forward again, and I recently discovered that the calm background soundtrack in Ore no Ryomi 2 is actually the ‘Neighborhood 4’ track from The Sims.