If you think the "Iron Chef" TV show serves up a wacky culinary experience, wait until you get a taste of "Cooking Mama: Cook Off," a new video game designed for the Nintendo Wii.

Loosely based on the popular Nintendo DS title "Cooking Mama," this console version lets you take command of the kitchen using the Wii's innovative motion-sensing wireless controller. Your goal is to prepare, cook and serve dishes from around the world within a time limit.

While not without its flaws, Majesco Entertainment's "Cooking Mama: Cook Off" is a deliciously fun and silly exercise.

Think of your Wii remote as your all-in-one cooking utensil. It can be a knife for chopping vegetables and cutting meat, a handle to a frying pan or pot to shake seasoning on your dish, or a roller for sushi. You hold and point the controller in different ways, depending on the task, and the effect is seen on-screen in real time.

For example, to peel a carrot, you point the remote at the screen and move your arm up and down, and you'll see the virtual peeler work on the vegetable in real time. Need to mash a potato? Hold the controller upright and quickly shake it up and down. Cooking a paella requires you to steam mussels, chop onions, mince peppers, cut and stir seafood into the pan and cook rice. You know you've done a good job in the kitchen when your forearm is a tad sore by the end of a long recipe.

In the main single-player mode, Let's Cook, you select from 10 recipes, such as minestrone soup from Italy or mochi from Japan, and based on your performance — namely speed and accuracy — you will receive a gold, silver or bronze medal. Your best score is also recorded, so you can attempt to beat it later in the game or compare it with the score of Cooking Mama, your anime mentor. If you perform your duties well, a number of dishes will become unlocked, such as a hot dog (U.S.) or shrimp in chili sauce (from China). An optional Challenge mode is an endurance test to complete a recipe at an accelerated pace with no breaks between steps.

Two other modes add to the fun: One is Friends and Food of the World, where you can cook native dishes against computer-controlled opponents to see who can achieve a higher score. Another mode is Friends and Food, a two-player split-screen game to see who is the better chef.

The game features 250 kinds of foods, which make up the 55 real-world dishes from 10 nations, including England, France, Germany, India and Russia.