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Yoshinoya Beef Bowl Simulator Thrills For PS2
An anonymous reader writes "According to a hands-on account of Success' Japanese PS2 title Yoshinoya over at GameSpot, the game, based on the popular Japanese/U.S. restaurant chain, 'is quite possibly one of the greatest beef-bowl simulators on the current generation of game consoles.' Sadly, the game probably won't make it out of Japan." Apparently filled with hectic multi-part gameplay: "You'll take the role of a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed trainee at a Yoshinoya store who must work his way up through the ranks of the apron-and-hat-wearing set to be the best employee to ever seat a customer, pour tea, prepare a bowl, and shout 'Arigato gozaimashita!'"
I'm always looking for new kinds of games but what the hell is a beef bowl simulation????
And are there that many that you can say:
One of the greatest beef-bowl simulators on the current generation of game consoles
"I'm not a procrastinator, I'm temporally challenged"
Virtual work? Do I get virtual tips? Do I pay virtual taxes? Are there virtual dooche nozzles that order everything that is not on the menu then not leave a tip?
Just wondering, virtual...
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
Now *that's* a game I'd buy!
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"You'll take the role of a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed trainee at a Yoshinoya store who must work his way up through the ranks of the apron-and-hat-wearing set to be the best employee to ever seat a customer, pour tea, prepare a bowl, and shout 'Arigato gozaimashita!'"
Smack me for this, but my eyes keep seeing "Mr. Roboto" in there somewhere. Does anyone else reflexively think of the song "Mr. Roboto" by Styx whenever they see the word "arigato"?
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
do we have to wear virtual boobs to get more tips? dow e get virtually slapped on the butt by virtual pervs? and slap them with virtual restraining orders?
What a country!
Only the japaneese would have the guts to release such a game. It's this willingness to take risks that makes the games from Japan of a higher quality than US or European games.
Do you think EA would bother making this game. Even bother to think up of a new game. Why bother? Just wait till a small studio does, buy them out and run the series until its hyped up, buggy and hollywoodised death.
Come on companies!! Innovate!!! Look what these guys have done!
May the Maths Be with you!
Basically, you work a cash register, and you get a total and a number of bills. Your job is to figure out the correct change, and hand it over using the least number of coins possible. Of course, you are also timed.
Now the point of this post: These are both simulations to prepare kids for low-paying, repetitive jobs in the service industry. The fact that this one is linked to a particular brand also makes it a form of viral advertising.
Folks, this is not a good thing.
When you're an undergrad, all you can afford is ramen (occasionally PB&J or Mac&Cheese). But then, when you're a grad student, you enter the realm of delicious Yoshinoya Beef Bowl! Yummmmm!
For those who are struggling with the phrase "Arigato gozaimashita!" this link explains:
Frequently Asked Question in Japanese language - What is the difference between Arigatou gozaimasu and Arigatou gozaimashita?
I am serious though, this is a good movie. Quite funny too.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Meanwhile, each market continues to jones for something new, fresh, and innovative because the surest bets only cover the middle sixth or so of the bell curve. (Warning: I just pulled that statistic out of my ass.) The reward of a venture tends to be directly proportional to the risks of the venture. Most companies aren't willing to take that risk.
For those keeping score, this is where hard regionalization might hurt markets. Those people in market A might be interested in a product of market B and vice versa, but because of the artificial barriers, they remain inaccessible. (And yeah, I know, nationalization of software can be tricky. Even so, there are people who are bilingual...)
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
*please* don't read the FA; you might learn something.
Slightly off-topic...
A friend was telling me that most of Yoshinoya's beef comes from the US. Since the recent mad cow ban they've started serving pork instead of beef. When news of the switch broke people started lining up for final bowls before the beef ran out. At about $2.50 a bowl it's a nice alternative to McDonald's.
are the only place you can get a beef bowl from Yoshinoya(in Japan anyway) right now. After mad cow was discovered in the US, Japan blocked all imports of US beef, and still has the block in place(they said they would remove it with 100% testing, but so far the US has said that would be too expensive without any real increase in accuracy), so Yoshinoya has stopped serving beef bowls outside their original restaurant in a certain part of Tokyo(their original store, can't remember what area) where they use more expensive beef. McDonalds imports their meat from Australia, but Yoshinoya has said that Australian beef just doesn't work right in the beef bowls.
They have replaced the beef with chicken/pork, still cheap, but just not as good.
If you want to virtually work, I can give you a virtual job with my dad building virtual houses in the virtually hot a$$ summer heat. Extrememly realistic environment and I won't even charge much for an 8 hour session.
The Japanese are batshit crazy.
Exactly how much toe fungus do you have to smoke to come up with a "Beef Bowl Simulator" ?
Honestly, though. We should only be so lucky to have anything like this sort of creativity with our big US game developers. There may not be anything all that awe inspiring about FoodSims, but I'd prefer it to mindless name-brand knockoffs based on a lame formula for success.
--LordPixie
Think of all the sequels it could spawn with all different types of food!
They basically used ideas from other puzzle games that work, and applied beef bowls and some twists. So no it's not a "work simulator". And I'd actually like to try it.
At least in the US, Yoshinoya's "beef bowl" is made with rubber, not beef.
Nothing to see here; Move along.
There was a game where you could easily manage a restuarant with the help of your dual analog sticks. You would have to fill up a beer without over flowing, chase down people who dont pay blocks away, and (not all including) satisfy the secret shopper! This was on a PSX Underground disc looooong ago when it was still for PS1. Anyone know the name for this?
This sounds like an update to a game I'm quite fond of. I know it only as "My Own Food." I don't know if that name has anything to do with the original title, but that's what the translation was on the site that a friend of mine ordered it from in... '99 maybe?
My Own Food, from what I could tell since it was entirely in japanese and I didn't read it at all, was about you, a young successful chef who had twice bested your rival, the evil frog cook. At the beginning of the game, in what was a stereotypically poorly compressed intro movie on PSX's, the video shows you receiving an invitation to the Frog Cook's cook-off, as it were. When you arrive on the island of "Cookingdom" somehow by schoolbus, you have to work your way up the chain of restaurants in the city until you can battle the Frog.
Now, each level was layed out in a similar fashion to this Beef Bowl game, to the point where it almost makes me think they were made by the same company.
You started out each day by cooking at the restaurant. Characters (up to 6 at a time) would come into the restaurant, and order something. The first level revolved around ramen and beer. Someone would come in (there was a 2d representation of them along the bottom of the screen) and say "Beeritao" or something like that.
You used the d-pad to move up and down on the left side of the screen with the list of available patrons to wait on. Choose the first one, and a 3D image of the tools or activity needed to perform waiting on them would appear. In the beer case, a frosty mug and a tap would appear. Select the task with circle, and then the analog joysticks control the action. The left stick would control the angle of the mug, while the right stick controlled the flow of beer from the tap.
Each step in waiting on a customer would give you a 1 to 10 rating. In order to get a perfect store on the beer-pouring, you had to angle the glass at full tilt while filling up the glass most of the way, then slowly release the angle until it was almost vertical while easing pressure on the beer tap. The head of the beer had to just overflow the teeniest bit in order for the customer to be happy. And that's just the beer. On the first level.
There was also a combo system for waiting on multiple customers at a time, but you could only do it on certain steps of certain items. For example, the ramen in the first stage. When you selected a customer who wanted ramen, the first thing you would do is to cut up a random vegetable that they want in the ramen. Like a carrot. In this case, the left analog stick controlled where you held the knife, and the right stick was the up down cutting action of the knife.
This simple act really represented the whole point of the game, through mastery of the analog sticks and precision with time. See, you had a few choices as to how to proceed to cut the carrot. If you only moved the left analog stick very slowly and chopped the carrot into fine slices, the customer would be happy with that step and give you a 10. But, this takes a long time, as the customers only stick around for a short time (represented by the icon in the upper left slowly moving off screen). You had to achieve a balance of both the proper pressure on the stick to go fast, coupled with quick precise presses of the right stick to cut it at the right time, giving you smallish slices and speed. You couldn't go too fast though, because you could cut yourself, complete with blood-squirting. Needless to say, customers weren't happy if you cut yourself, and it took more time.
Anyway, step two for ramen involved letting the ingredients simmer on the stove. After you completed step one for the customer, you were given the option to move on to another customer before proceeding with step two. If you chopped the ingredients in step one for more than one customer and then selected step two, you could put both of their ingredients in the pot at the same time, thereby a) increasing your chances of having a ha
Only the japaneese would have the guts to release such a game
Is it guts or is the game part of a promotional or marketing campaign and therefore subsidized? Remember ChexQuest, a sananitized version of Doom put into every box of Chex cereal for a while?
And if its not part of a promotional or marketing campaign it is not necessarily a gutsy move. As others have pointed out tastes are wildly different between Japan and the US. It might be gutsy in the US but conventional in Japan to release such a game.
Don't forget there was a NES game based on McDonalds released in America. It was called M.C. Kids (McKids) and featured lots of references to the fast food chain. I heard it wasn't that bad of a game actually.
V O T E F O R M O G
For those following the far-reaching effects of the US Mad Cow scare in Japan, the next version of this title is going to have to be referred to as Yoshinoya 2: Pork Bowl Simulator... As it stands now, the only beef bowl you're going to get from Yoshinoya here in Japan is a virtual one. Damn those prions for robbing me of the delicious taste of shredded beef-flavored fat delicately slopped over greasy rice with a garnish of radioactive ginger!