The great thing about the Japanese PS1 and PS2 libraries being so unfathomably vast is that when you dig into the weeds, sometimes the weeds turn out to be pretty inspired games in their own right. Japanese games have a long-running history of licensed tie-ups with food brands dating back to at least Kaettekita Mario Bros, a redux of the arcade (non-Super) Mario Bros prominently sponsored by ochazuke and furikake make Nagatanien. My personal favorite of these, though, is this Coco Ichibanya curry restaurant game I finally got around to buying. Who got the ball rolling on this game, whether it was CocoIchi itself looking to commission someone or developer Dorart, primarily a pachislot sim company to this very day, taking the initiative for whatever reason, I have no idea, but the end result is an alarmingly compelling game that mixes manual curry preparation using the analog sticks a la Ore no Ryouri with some light table waiting elements where you have to walk up to customers to take their orders and deliver their food. I discovered this game years and years ago while digging into another licensed PS2 fast food game that's better than it has any right to be, Yoshinoya, after learning about that game by way of one Jeff Gerstmann, but between the two, my heart ultimately lies with this game, even if CocoIchi itself is not, in fact, my preference when it comes to Japanese curry franchises.
Should you go to the trouble of also picking this up yourself if it piques your interest? Maybe, maybe not. For whatever mysterious reason, prices on this game have skyrocketed in recent years in what surely has to be a case of some vtuber popularizing it and ratcheting up demand, which definitely happens from time to time with older games that go viral that way. I ended up paying about 5000 yen for this on Yahoo Japan, which is still a lot more than the range it previously hovered at, and it regularly goes for several thousand more than that. But as a fun novelty to throw onto your PCSX2 instance or OPL setup on a real PS2? Absolutely worth playing, especially for those with a yen for Ore no Ryouri and/or Cook, Serve, Delicious-style food prep mechanics, and while I can't speak for the later parts of the game that task you with other things as well, the main curry prep/serving portion itself is, as far as I remember, gentle enough for those who don't speak Japanese.
That said, the mustard yellow jacket art is pretty handsome in person, so I won't say you shouldn't go to the trouble of getting it, either. Just maybe don't procrastinate on it for a decade like I did.
