Summer means vacations, barbecues… and sometimes lively debates about the subtle art of lighting a grill. Some wait patiently for the charcoal to turn white, while others prefer to press a button on their plancha and hand out advice.

So, while waiting for the coals to be just right, and after introducing you to retro games that smell like summer, we thought a little overview of retro cooking games wouldn’t hurt. Here, things jump, sizzle, fry… and the cooking never fails!

It’s not easy to find retro games that focus 100% on cooking proper. It must be said that with the arrival of touchscreens and mobile games, cooking games became much more popular later on, notably thanks to Cooking Mama on Nintendo DS in 2006, and more recently the very fun Overcooked.

What about our retro games? Food most often appears as bonuses, usually for healing, following a simple rule: the more appetizing it looks, the more life it restores! As for purely cooking games, here are three titles dedicated to the pixelated world of cooking — feel free to add to the list if your retro taste buds bring back memories:

BurgerTime (Data East, 1982)

The classic. You play as Peter Pepper, a chef who must assemble giant hamburgers while escaping edible enemies! Sausages, fried eggs, pickles — they all chase you as you stomp buns with your boots. Simple, weird, brilliant.

Ore no Ryouri (PS1, 1999)

A gem that stayed in Japan but has a cult following. You run a restaurant at full speed: cutting, cooking, plating, serving. Everything flows in a joyful chaos of mini-games that really test your nerves. A precursor to a lineage of frantic cooking games and a major inspiration for Cook, Serve, Delicious!.

Panic Restaurant (NES, 1992)

Developed by Taito, this platformer puts you in the chef Cookie’s hat, armed with a frying pan to fight mutant food in a haunted restaurant. Enemies include eggs, shrimp, desserts, and even pots. It’s funny, colorful, and completely crazy. A real old-school pixel stew.

Fast Food Tycoon (PC, 1999)

A management game where you play as a fast-food entrepreneur tasked with creating and expanding your restaurant empire. You’ll need to manage menus, staff, pricing, and marketing to outsmart the competition and become the king of burgers. Strategy, economics, and humor blend together in this classic culinary simulation.

Sushi Bar (Naomi Arcade, 2000)

A unique Japanese arcade game where you must prepare and serve sushi in a fast-paced environment, carefully following customers’ orders. Fast, colorful, and demanding, Sushi Bar focuses on speed and precision. It offered an immersive culinary experience long before mobile cooking games became a trend.

Roasted Meat That Saves Lives

Even when you’re not cooking, food is everywhere in retro games, often as bonuses. The most iconic of all (forget the mushrooms)? The well-grilled meat that restores your entire health bar.

• In Streets of Rage, a roast chicken hides in a dumpster.
• In Golden Axe, a roast drops from a campfire after kicking a goblin thief.
• In many beat’em ups or hack’n’slash games of the era, meat is the ultimate elixir. Nobody knows how it got there, but you eat it without hesitation.

From giant burgers to haunted kitchens, frantic orders to survival steaks… retro gastronomy lacked neither salt, pixel nor imagination.
And even if cooking techniques vary, one thing is sure: in front of the screen or the embers, nothing beats sharing it with friends. 😉