Ratatouille

Disney•Pixar Ratatouille for Nintendo DS is a 2007 action-platform game from Helixe and THQ, built around Pixar’s film about Remy, a rat whose love of cooking pulls him toward Paris and the kitchen of his hero, Auguste Gusteau. Released in North America in June 2007, this handheld version tells the familiar story through its own 3D adventure stages and stylus-led kitchen tasks. It is not simply the same game as the console editions on a smaller screen: Helixe designed it around the Nintendo DS controls, its two-screen presentation, and short portable challenges.

Players guide Remy through locations inspired by the film, from the French countryside and Parisian sewers to restaurant spaces and city streets. The main objective is to complete stage missions while gathering ingredients needed for the food preparation that follows. Remy runs, jumps, climbs, and moves through obstacles, with the player choosing either the directional controls or the stylus for movement. That choice can be changed during play, giving the platforming a control scheme tailored to different DS habits.

Stealth is as important as agility when a small rat is navigating places intended for people. An exposure meter tracks how visible Remy is, so players must work around human characters as they pursue goals in each area. His movement options include scrambling up walls and making wall jumps, while his sense of smell helps point out objects connected to a mission. These mechanics give the game’s familiar movie settings a clear interactive purpose: a kitchen or sewer route becomes a place to explore, collect from, and cross without attracting too much attention.

Between adventures, Ratatouille brings the cooking theme to the DS touch screen. After collecting the necessary food, players use the stylus to prepare dishes through actions such as cutting and mixing ingredients. The cooking sequences are timed, asking players to keep recipes moving so the restaurant can serve them. The Nintendo DS microphone also has a small part to play: blowing into it can cool a boiling pot. Rather than treating the culinary premise as background decoration, the game alternates hands-on food preparation with Remy’s platforming journeys.

The game is primarily a single-player adventure, but its cooking activity also offers a social DS feature. With Single-Card Download Play, two to four players can compete in the cooking minigame using one game card. This separates its multiplayer option from the story campaign and makes use of a feature closely associated with Nintendo’s handheld. Japan received the game as Remy no Oishii Restaurant, while other regions used the Ratatouille title tied to the film.

Ratatouille for Nintendo DS arrived alongside a large wave of game adaptations of the 2007 Pixar release, though the DS entry was developed by Helixe rather than the studios responsible for several other platform versions. Its combination of 3D platform stages, light stealth, touch-screen recipe work, microphone interaction, and Download Play gives it a specifically handheld interpretation of Remy’s journey. For players interested in Disney and Pixar games on the Nintendo DS, it captures the film’s movement between hidden rat-sized routes and the busy world of professional cooking.