Anyone remember Diner Dash? That time management game where you play as a young lady running a diner? For its time, it was pretty innovative, and it inspired many different similar time management restaurant games. While I played it occasionally as a kid, I don't have many fond memories of it. A game that I DO have fond memories of is one of the games following in its footsteps; that game is Cake Mania. Something about the game just hit all the marks for me. The bright visuals, the pleasant music, and just the general gameplay made this a favorite for the 9-year-old Demozan. And I was happy to see that, 11 year later, the game is here on Steam, and still holds up pretty nicely. I had a lot of fun with this game, and it tickled my nostalgia the whole way through.

So what's with the big red thumbs down?

Well, if you take a gander at the other reviews, you can tell that this game is an oldie, and therefore runs like ass on modern systems. This can't be helped, sure, but to sell this game at a not-very-low price without fixing compatibility issues isn't something I can give a pass. And it's not like they didn't know how to update this game; they changed the initial loading screen to have an ugly, low-res Steam logo pasted onto it, showing that they DID know how to change it for the Steam release. But they didn't fix the game straight-up not working properly.

Okay, it's not completely unfixable, sure. If you go into the main files for the game, you can check the properties and activate a "compatibility mode" so that it works as if it was being played on a Windows XP computer. But this doesn't fully save the collection for me. When I get a game, I want it to work fully as intended when I open it. I don't want to tinker with the inner workings of the game to be able to play it. And worse, it doesn't fully fix the problems, either! Sometimes, the cursor glitches out and causes it to turn into a black box and duplicate itself onto the game. And while it hasn't happened to me, I've also heard stories of save data being wiped on shutdown. That's a pretty big issue, if you ask me.

Again, the game itself is fun and good. I loved my time with it back then, and I love it just as much now. If what I talked about doesn't bother you, go right on ahead and give it a try. But I don't like supporting half-hearted re-release attempts, and knowing that there's no other good way of getting this game nowadays kinda makes it difficult not to see this as your only option. Don't let this review stop you if you don't want it to, but know what tribulations you're getting yourself into when you get this collection.

Anyone remember Diner Dash? That time management game where you play as a young lady running a diner? For its time, it was pretty innovative, and it inspired many different similar time management restaurant games. While I played it occasionally as a kid, I don't have many fond memories of it. A game that I DO have fond memories of is one of the games following in its footsteps; that game is Cake Mania. Something about the game just hit all the marks for me. The bright visuals, the pleasant music, and just the general gameplay made this a favorite for the 9-year-old Demozan. And I was happy to see that, 11 year later, the game is here on Steam, and still holds up pretty nicely. I had a lot of fun with this game, and it tickled my nostalgia the whole way through. So what's with the big red thumbs down? Well, if you take a gander at the other reviews, you can tell that this game is an oldie, and therefore runs like ass on modern systems. This can't be helped, sure, but to sell this game at a not-very-low price without fixing compatibility issues isn't something I can give a pass. And it's not like they didn't know how to update this game; they changed the initial loading screen to have an ugly, low-res Steam logo pasted onto it, showing that they DID know how to change it for the Steam release. But they didn't fix the game straight-up not working properly. Okay, it's not completely unfixable, sure. If you go into the main files for the game, you can check the properties and activate a "compatibility mode" so that it works as if it was being played on a Windows XP computer. But this doesn't fully save the collection for me. When I get a game, I want it to work fully as intended when I open it. I don't want to tinker with the inner workings of the game to be able to play it. And worse, it doesn't fully fix the problems, either! Sometimes, the cursor glitches out and causes it to turn into a black box and duplicate itself onto the game. And while it hasn't happened to me, I've also heard stories of save data being wiped on shutdown. That's a pretty big issue, if you ask me. Again, the game itself is fun and good. I loved my time with it back then, and I love it just as much now. If what I talked about doesn't bother you, go right on ahead and give it a try. But I don't like supporting half-hearted re-release attempts, and knowing that there's no other good way of getting this game nowadays kinda makes it difficult not to see this as your only option. Don't let this review stop you if you don't want it to, but know what tribulations you're getting yourself into when you get this collection.