Babble

Culinary arts for the under-ten set is a mine field of sticky confections and inedible dough: it's all fun and games putting together a spaghetti dinner made of green Play-Doh but it doesn't really look that appetizing, does it? Thankfully we live in a glorious digital age and child chefs need no longer be shackled by the limitations of the plastic kitchen tools of old. They can prep all kinds of delicacies in Cooking Mama, a sweet little game for the Nintendo DS that has players making everything from omelets to pork curry, with no clean-up necessary.

Mama, the patient cartoon chef who instructs players on how to make the game's selection of dishes, is a lot like what you'd imagine Rachael Ray to be like off screen; beaming a smile at you when you perform well and all freaky, frightening rage when you fail (seriously, Mama's eyes are replaced with fire.) The cooking process is simple: each recipe is comprised of four or five timed preparation tasks like chopping vegetables, rolling dough, or flipping steaks on a grill using the DS's touchscreen and stylus to do the job.

The difficulty level can ramp up pretty quickly, especially when you're trying to delicately grill fish or make sure that your octopus balls don't over-fry. Speaking of fried octopus balls, an unexpected side effect of Cooking Mama is exposure to some unusual cuisine. The game is Japanese in origin and its Americanization doesn't go beyond language translation. So some distinctly Asian cuisine makes up half the menu alongside familiar international favorites like pizza. So an added bonus of the game is that the next time you go to a Japanese restaurant, your kid can order for you. — John Constantine

"Little monkey. Big fun." That was the ingenious marketing slogan behind the original Super Monkey Ball game, a PS2 game that imprisoned cute monkeys in tiny gerbil-like bubbles and set them spinning through a technicolor gauntlet of fantastical mazes. It was a puzzle game, pure and simple: roll a ball from a start-point to an end-point, but all good games are a kind of bizarre conceptual art too: Why not a marble (like Marble Madness)? Who came up with the idea to put a monkey inside a ball, anyway? Why not a dog? Or a lizard? But, yes, monkey seems just right, especially that cute little one wearing a diaper. If you go too fast, your monkey falls tail over teakettle inside his little monkey ball. Go too slow and you run out of time. Fall off a maze (which are always suspended somewhere in the sky) and you plummet to your cutesy death. Super Monkey Ball 2 expanded the number of mazes into Las-Vegas-meets-putt-putt-course-in-outer-space absurdity, and the latest sequel, Super Monkey Ball Adventure, takes the addictive set-up and expands it into a Mario-like universe. The controls are still so simple anyone can start playing in minutes, but the levels in Adventure can be painfully complex — so stick with the original monkeys and their original balls. After all, the absurd simplicity of Monkey Ball (which sounds dirtier every time you say it) is what separates this franchise from its overblown competitors: Little idea. Big fun! — Logan Hill

Most video games for girls under ten tend to revolve around playing house or blank consumerism. But Scurge is an old-school shoot-em-up with colorful 2D graphics and a savvy space bounty hunter named Jenosa as its star. Most of the gameplay is a simple exercise in hand-eye coordination as Jenosa switches between weapons and navigates the labs. Players guide Jenosa around a dilapidated research facility that's been infested with an alien creature, a parasitic entity that can transform itself into a number of organic and mechanical baddies. Bratz this is not. — John Constantine

Everyone raves about online gameplay these days, but, ultimately, it's still a bit lonely: Just you in your living room alone with your controller. It's easy to forget that one of the new platforms' greatest advances is the opportunity to play party games. Eight controllers provide the opportunity to taunt seven competitors in person. For the Xbox, Fuzion Frenzy is simple enough and addictive enough for mom, dad, kids and maybe even grandma (ours plays, but not well, so we taunt her too). The game itself is a neon mash-up of Schwarzenegger's The Running Man, Tron, Dance Dance Revolution, and the Olympics. Set in a futuristic casino-like world where color-coded competitors battle for points and prizes, it's a tournament of minigames that you'll instantly recognize: boat and car-racing, twists on capture the flag, even tag. (One of my favorites allows you to splat bugs to protect giant burgers). The controls are dead simple: never more than a joystick and a button or two. And the graphics are streamlined and bright enough that you can tell what you're doing even when the screen is split into quarters (most new games are too complicated to be playable in split-screen). If you love those retro editions of old arcade games like Dig-Dug and Pac-Man because you and your kids can both figure them out you'll appreciate this one too. — Logan Hill

Here's everything you need to know about the board game Jumpin' Monkeys: it involves shooting plastic monkeys into a tree with a catapult. If this sounds like your idea of fun, then you'll definitely want a copy. If you're worried about monkeys flying all over the room (which they will), or catapults being difficult to aim (which they are), then you may want to pass. We understand that you have enough chaos in your life without adding monkeys and catapults. But if you feel like embracing that chaos, Jumpin' Monkeys is a lot of fun for kids five and up — and, after the kids' bedtime, for drunken adults. — Gwynne Watkins