First Look at Cale Mania Main Street

One of the longest running food themed games in terms of series length, Cake Mania was originally going to end after Cake Mania 3 only for the game creators to stretch it out by two games... this game, Main Street, and Lights Cameras Action!... but what happens next remains to be seen. As for this version, on the DS, it may suffer the sa,e singular flaw as previous versions but we'll see...

So now Jack and Jill are now married... oh, just noticed the horrible pun in his name.... bad game, bad... anyway they return to Jill's hometown only to realize that it's in even worst shape in before as another mega corporation (no doubt owned by the cake making madman from Kamen Rider OOOs) is running the community into the ground driving the small businesses out of business. So the entire game has Jill (running the Evans Bakery), Jack (running a burger shop), Risha (flower shop) and Tiny (sushi shop) helping save the town... how? Well as you play all the money you make is split in half. Half the money you use to update each store in different ways, amd their two game styles. For the traditional Cake Mania style (Jill and Risha) you buy new equipment for your shops, but for the rather Burger Island style of gameplay (Jack and Tiny) you purchase new recipes, recommended you unlock one at a time so you have a chance to master each in turn, as well as a TV and cookie maker since your playing zone is dar different than what your used to to date from Cake Mania... however if you played Burger Island these two won't phase you one bit. As for the second half of the money it goes into the town where you use it to improve the four shops (though that doesn't seem to do anything for them at all except increase the amounts earned each day when your not playing the four businesses). The rest of the money you spend buying tourist sites to improve the visibility of your town attracting more tourists, though again it doesn't seem to impact gameplay any.

The only possible problem is once again the size of the game on the DS. Remember this is a port of a PC game series so this game, like all the others on the series, are far more comfortable on larger screens, which is made even more awkward as the series creators only went so far converting the games for the DS over time (one major consession not taken yet is a change of the mini games to make them more DS friendly, also cake orders should be displayed on the top screen with the customers so they're larger and easier to see.

All in all while the problem with screen size might be a concern, I still have good feelings about this, the fourth game of the series. Hope to review it in the Fall. Stay tuned.