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If you thought Nintendo DS titles couldn’t get anymore stranger then think again. On the 20th of June Nintendo are set to release “Cooking Guide™ Can’t decide what to eat?”. Billed as having varying difficulties of recipes and being suitable for all, the titles voice recognition is said to make it simple to go through each stage of a recipe. “Want to make yourself a quick dinner after a long day at work? Want to plan a week of meals for your family? Or do you want to make a Sunday roast for 10? Cooking Guide can help you solve all these and many other meal dilemmas” so says the promotional material.

The games key features are:

• Interactive cooking aid that takes you through over 250 recipes from scratch.
• Game is designed to take the user through every stage of cooking.
• The recipes are enhanced with many demonstrational videos which go beyond the capabilities of printed cook books.
• Additional functionalities are included to facilitate the cooking and preparation process.

It’s times like these we’re reminded of all those interactive multimedia titles that came out when CD drives started to take off and you had the likes of “Gardening By Choice: Flowers & Foliage” and “Randy McNally’s America: U.S. Atlas” being released on the Philips CDI.

The final of the three new games announced by SEGA today is Infinite Line.The game is an ambitious RPG being produced by PlatinumGames exclusively for the Nintendo DS. Talking about the game SEGA say “Infinite Line (working title), a role playing game exclusively for the Nintendo DS™ portable handheld system, takes place in outer space and gives players the ability to control, build, outfit and customise more than 150 spaceships. Infinite Line stretches the DS hardware to the limit, offering over 200 characters and the ability to control multiple spaceships at any one time. Releasing in 2009 and currently being produced by Atsushi Inaba and directed by Hifumi Kouno (from developer Nude Maker), Infinite Line is one of the most complex RPG titles developed for the DS to date.”

No screenshots or video have been released, only some concept which can be viewed below:

SEGA Europe and America today announced a publishing partnership with PlatinumGames, the studio setup by the main players at Konami’s Clover Studios following it’s closure. Clover Studios were behind the critically acclaimed game Okami which was recently ported to the Wii. The newly formed studio will be creating four titles to be published by SEGA, three of which have been announced today. The games are MADWORLD for the Wii, Infinite Line (working title) for the Nintendo DS and Bayonetta for the Xbox 360.

“The creative forces at PlatinumGames bring a new level of imagination into the SEGA family at a pivotal time in the video game industry when the demand for quality, originality and fun has never been greater,” said Tatsuya Minami, President and CEO, PlatinumGames. “These new titles will contribute meaningfully to SEGA’s brand, while adding a new level of depth to the strategic portfolio of games in our library.”. “We are thrilled to have forged this new relationship with such a talented team of individuals and we are understandably excited about the titles that they are producing for us,” commented Mike Hayes President and COO of SEGA Europe Ltd. “SEGA continually strives to release games for all consumers that are of the highest quality, working with Platinum Games further enhances that strategy.”.

Despite Rare being owned by Microsoft these days, THQ are set to publish Rare’s Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise on the Nintendo DS this Autumn. The game looks like it will play the same as the Xbox 360 version does but will probably feel a lot better using the DS’s touch screen compared to the Xbox 360 controller. As THQ Bigwig Bob Aniello puts it “Nintendo DS is the perfect platform for the Viva Piñata franchise because players can have direct interaction with the environment and their piñatas using the stylus. We are thrilled to introduce Microsoft’s critically-acclaimed Viva Piñata series to an entirely new segment of the gaming community”.

In the midst of all the GTA IV hype, Sierra released 6 new screenshots from their forthcoming Ghostbusters game. Release date for the game is down as “Autumn” this year on all formats. Check out the screenshots below from the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC versions below:

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Codemasters have unveiled a new trailer showing off their latest title, Race Driver: GRID. The word on the street/interweb is that this IS in-game footage! (although obviously not the DS version).

(Apologies if you’ve already seen this article from a few days ago, I had to take it down due to some technical issues, but now it’s back!)

Already trained up your brain, sight, face, maths, yoga, spelling, Enlgish, French, Spanish and health, but really all you ever wanted to do was train up on your Driving Theory? Well It looks like your wishes have been answered as Atari UK today announced they are to release this very title in the summer! The game is said to be targeted at provisional license holders who need that little extra help to be successful when the day of the real test comes around. Speaking about the game  Jeremy Wigmore, Managing Director of Atari Uk said “Wherever they are, players can take the test, revise the questions or simply play challenges. We hope this title will help people learn everything they need to know to successfully pass their driving theory test”.

In terms of an actual booth, I was quite disappointed with Square Enix. To put it simply, there was no booth. There was a wall with a few screens in it showing trailers and some seats. That was it.

I have the sneaky suspicion though, that the handheld Square-Enix games such as FF:XII Revenant Wings and FF:VII Crisis Core were playable at other booths. If any reader has more information please leave a comment