"Science Papa" Brings The Lab Into Your Living Room

Gamers, get ready for "Science Papa." The upcoming Activision game promises to "turn living rooms into virtual laboratories" with 30 experiments, all on the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo DS stylus (or the iPhone).

Players become part of Science Papa's research team and compete against a "crazy cast of rival scientists," undoubtedly for bragging rights over that next government grant. Science Papa channels some serious Einstein hair, and his team's chemist looks a bit like astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson at the American Museum of Natural History (sorry Neil). As for the female scientists, one bears a strange resemblance to Batman villain Poison Ivy, while the other sports the look of a field biologist or archaeologist. At the very least, she's no Lara Croft.

So maybe you didn't get into the cool labs in college, but "Science Papa" offers a virtual fix for your inner (or outer) geek. It all sounds good – but it also looks remarkably similar to Majesco's popular Nintendo console game, "Cooking Mama," which has led to some collective jaw-dropping around the Web.

Gaming blog Kotaku contacted Majesco's PR department, and got an unexpected reply from Mama herself. "Cooking Mama" dished that she and "Science Papa" had dated briefly "when he had much better hair," and said that Papa was now clearly trying to get in on the best-selling game action.
"You want real mind-bending science, go figure out how to make Toulouse Cassoulet for your next dinner party of 20 and let me know how it goes, Papa," Mama said in her message to Kotaku. Saucy … I mean, Oh Snap!