Out to Lunch: A Delicious (and Pretty Fun) Platformer
Honestly, given how much food content exists I’m frankly shocked that Out to Lunch hasn’t gotten some kind of comeback or even a remake. I mean its cartoon aesthetic aside, the game is literally about collecting ingredients that are unique to whatever region is being explored and catching them in a butterfly net.
Some twitch streamer really needs to get on this.
Just saying.
Or Guy Fieri, that dude rules.
Pierre la Chef is…Out to Lunch is a 2D scrolling, side view, action, platformer videogame originally released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System(SNES) and Nintendo Gameboy in 1993. The game involves controlling the character Pierre la Chef, one of the world’s most renowned and celebrated culinary artists. In fact, Pierre is so well known for his culinary mastery that apparently the vegetables have come to life and begun escaping the kitchen for fear of their own lives. Readers should take note that this premise would later be repeated in the year 2016 with the film Sausage Party which has…very different aesthetic goals.
Though a majority of time with my parents’s Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) was spent on Super Mario All Stars, Donkey Kong Country, and Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past there were a few other cartridges in their collection, and I would regularly borrow games from our Local Hastings. I can’t honestly recall whether my parents had owned Out to Lunch before I played it, but eventually the cartridge just stayed in our home and I didn’t mind or ask questions. I was too busy chasing potatoes and hopping after wheels of cheese.
Speaking of.
Out to Lunch doesn't have much in the way of a plot. Like many early platformer games, the main structure is just a quick Macguffin and then players play. Unlike Super Mario World which had a story about saving Dinosaur land from Bowser and his minions, Out to Lunch was just about catching food which had escaped, and then eventually defeating Pierre la Chef’s rival La Chef Noire, who would randomly appear and release all the food Pierre had caught. Players will control Pierre as he explores six countries (Switzerland, Greece, West Indies, Mexico, China, and finally France) and tries to acquire the runaway food that he will need to cook with. Each level of the various countries involves navigating Pierre horizontally and vertically through platforms and the farther into the game Pierre will go the difficulty will increase. Many early platforms will only involve Pierre to jump up and through them to reach the fleeing eggs, mushrooms, potatoes, etc. However as the player continues the difficulty increases meaning some platforms will have rocks along the bottom meaning Pierre has to run to the end of them and jump on top. Other platforms cannot be reached by a simple leap and will require Pierre to jump on a large conveniently placed spring which will propel him up through the air. Depending on the region, environmental factors will also affect Pierre’s ability to run and walk. For example in the opening levels of Switzerland the top-most levels are coated in ice meaning players will have to navigate the slippery motion mechanics.
And then there’s the bloody food.
Out to Lunch is a cartoon game, in fact it’s incredibly cartoony. The food non-playable characters(npcs) that Pierre chases range from wheels of cheese, eggs that roll about, mushrooms that hop from level to level, bulbous potatoes that will shuffle away from Pierre like the chongus supremes that they are, and tomatoes that…well…they’re there, I guess. What’s important is that the visual design of the npcs is simple and designed to be cutesy. This is because Out to Lunch is trying to achieve a sweet cartoon aesthetic, and before my reader assumes anything let me be clear, this isn’t a problem; there’s plenty of room in the canon of videogames for painfully cute games. My essays about Hello Kitty Party and Capybara Spa should make it clear by now, I unironically appreciate cute videogames.
It would only be a mistake to assume that because Out to Lunch is cute that it has no challenge for players, or that it’s an empty aesthetic exercise. In fact I’d argue in this post-Cuphead universe we live in, anyone who wants to argue that cartoon games aren’t difficult clearly hasn’t fought Goopy LeGrand.
Besides the aesthetic though, Out to Lunch is a good (not great) videogame that offers an interesting insight into the genre of platformers.
So what is a platformer?
Platformer videogames are, structurally speaking, a genre in which characters control an avatar and then navigate them through 2D or 3D space. Often these games are about moving the character towards a particular goal, though I note that 3D platforming games tended to alter this structure by incorporating fighting mechanics and side quests. The early decades of videogame console development were largely dominated by platformer videogames in no small part because of the success of the Super Mario Bros series, and, most importantly, the money that that franchise was able to earn. Technologically speaking platformers were also easy to make and so plenty of development companies would use their investment capital to produce a few platformers to get them established and then work on other projects.
To wit, see the career of id Software which produced numerous Commander Keen videogames before diverging into passion, art-house projects about demons and shotguns.
I’m told they’re quite popular with the kids these days.
As a platformer Out to Lunch offers an arguably bare-bones narrative (the only cutscene involves Pierre opening a refrigerator and the food jumping out and escaping) with some interesting mechanics. Players can only capture the runaway food after they’ve acquired the butterfly net which can, depending on the level, be located next to the starting point, or on a platform accessible only by a careful series of jumps. Likewise the player can acquire salt packets which can be thrown at the food npcs thus temporarily confusing them and making them easier to catch. In later levels some food npcs have obviously spoiled (as is indicated by the totally-not-herpes-but-definitely-herpes green-splotches on their bodies(or the angry eyebrows suddenly pasted onto their original sprite)) and will attempt to attack Pierre causing the game to end prematurely. These mechanics and designs are interesting for the way they play with the then established designs of platformers such as Super Mario Bros and Donkey Kong; Out to Lunch was obviously taking the lessons of previous videogames and trying something new.
Which is an excellent opportunity to note that Out to Lunch is not a revolutionary or evolutionary platformer. Honestly it’s more of an experimental platformer.
Let me explain.
If I look at a classic example of a platformer videogame I would look at the original Super Mario Brothers for Famicom, Nintendo Entertainment System(NES) and Arcade cabinets. The game is a 2D, side scrolling, action, fantasy platformer. Players control Mario by moving him from the left side of the screen to the right, and along the way he will need to avoid enemy npcs by jumping over them or on top of them. Likewise players will have to jump over obstacles such holes in the ground, lava pits, fire traps, or enemies that are invulnerable to damage.
Looking at this structure, Out to Lunch differs from this archetype because immediately I note that the game is about moving Pierre horizontally but also vertically. There are multiple levels of platforms to explore and so the game is not about moving Pierre in one direction, and this is because of how npcs are being employed.
The food is running around.
Unlike Super Mario Bros which used enemies as obstacles, Out to Lunch makes the npcs the focus of the game itself. Pierre is trying to catch the runaway food, and while touching them will cause his character to become stunned, this is a temporary effect. He’ll wobble his head for a moment while a little cartoon bird whistles, but then he’ll stand back up in just a moment ready to resume the action. It’s also important to note that in Super Mario Bros. players could potentially leave all npcs alive in a level and just jump past them. Since the goal of the game was just to get Mario to the end of the level leaving an npc behind was not an issue. Out to Lunch however is designed around catching food. Each level has a specific number of food items that have to be caught before the timer runs out and then returned to the metal cage.
I interrupt this analysis because, years after originally playing this game and then replaying it again for capturing screenshots to include in the essay I was watching the food run back and forth within the cage. This is, honestly, deeply disconcerting. It begs the question: how sentient are these wheels of cheese, eggs, and mushrooms? They clearly know that Pierre is trying to catch them, but it’s never clear how much they understand their situation. Plus there’s like at least 10 food items per cage, which means they're cramped together trying to escape before they get cooked alive and eaten.
Do the food(s) have sentience? Do they have memories?
Am I the agent of some sort food genocide?
This speculation could unravel my thesis quickly, so I’ll just observe again that the film Sausage Party addressed most of these hypothetical questions, but unless readers are interested in what an animated food orgy would look like I’d probably encourage them to just play Out to Lunch.
I would also encourage my reader to limit their expectations because, honestly, the game ain’t that great. I don’t know how else to say it.
Nostalgia played a pretty significant role in why I decided to write anything about this videogame in the first place. I don’t remember Out to Lunch fondly the way I do games like Super Mario World or Donkey Kong Country, but I don’t hate it either. It was a game that I played because it was there, and as I’ve tried in these essays to understand how videogames work on a technical, rhetorical, emotional, and aesthetic level I believe it’s worthwhile to write about games that don’t have dramatic personal or cultural impact. Browsing my local Game XChange is often slowly studying the spines of plastic cases and reading titles I either don’t recognise or don’t care about until one game emerges from the collection that possesses relevance or meaning to me personally. Out to Lunch is the sort of game I would, at this point in my life, just leave in the stack unless someone I knew or appreciated told me to try it.
To wit.
If Tim Rogers, or SuperEyePatch Wolf, Ragnarox, or my lovely, beautiful, funny, beautiful, intelligent, and beautiful girlfriend told me I should try playing it, I probably would.
And, obviously, I would pay attention to that last suggestion more than any of the others.
This thought makes me consider how many videogames I haven’t played because they didn’t catch my attention, or because I didn’t have anyone recommending them to me.
Out to Lunch is not a great game, but it is a good game with some interesting control mechanics. It’s a videogame that offers an opportunity to consider how platformer videogames have been developed since their inception, and it has an aesthetic that would likely find a more receptive audience in today’s varied videogame market. Despite its faults it is worth the players’ time if for no other reason than it affords a wonderful context for more popular platformer videogames that involve chef’s catching supposedly sentient food.
Then again, as I think about it, that may be what Pizza Tower is about.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
10.13.2025
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