Tingle - A fistful of rupees

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Yup, the dude with a red nose is the hero.

Hello everyone! After my last entry dedicated to the adventures (and misadventures) of brave Prinny, in this new entry I´m going to talk about another popular (or infamous) secondary character that also managed to get its own game, and that belongs to one of my favorite game franchises of all time, The Legend of Zelda. What can I say that hasn´t been said already about this legendary series from Nintendo that has been narrating the stories of Link and his endless fight against the forces of evil that threaten Hyrule for almost 30 years, a series that has sold millions of copies and which some its episodes are considered to be among the best video games ever created, such as The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and specially The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, two timeless classics that have received every award and praising possible, and that still nowadays manage to influence the new generations. Of course, 30 years is a long time, and not even this masterpiece created by Shigeru Miyamoto, one of the brightest minds to ever grace the game industry, could avoid having some dark episodes. But in this entry I´m not going to talk about the episodes everyone might thinking about, either the good ones or the bad ones, in fact, the game I´m going to talk about doesn´t even belong to the main series itself, and although it is indeed a very... special game, like really special, the truth is that, like it or not, one just cannot deny the game´s quality and originality. I´m talking about a relatively recent spin-off called Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland. Let´s see what the adventure of the greediest character in all of Hyrule has to offer.

Uncle Rupee himself.

Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland (from now on Tingle in Rupeeland or else I´ll never finish this entry) is an Action- RPG developed exclusively for the Nintendo DS. Opposite to what we see in most Zelda games in which we always control brave Link, in this game we will play as Tingle, a secondary character that has appeared in a number of recent Zelda games and that gives name to the game I´m talking about. On contrary to Link, Tingle is not a brave and handsome young man that is going to save the world from darkness and save the beautiful princess, no, nothing like that, Tingle is a lazy and chubby 35 years old dude who has never done anything profitable in his whole life and who´s only plan in life is to lay down scratching his fat ass in his duplex, till one day he hears a voice and his life changes forever. The voice he hears is not the voice of his conscience, for Tingle doesn´t seem to posses such a thing, but the voice of Uncle Rupee, who plans to help Tingle to do something useful with his life. Uncle Rupee tells Tingles that there is a paradise known as Rupeeland in which he will be able to hang around with the most beautiful maidens and eat the most delicious food, and all he has to do to be able to reach such place is throw into a pond nearby his house all the rupees he finds to make the tower lying

Fear not, ladies, Tingle is here!

underneath the pond rise up until it reaches Rupeeland so that he can enter paradise. Of course, this sounds like music to Tingle´s ears, making him feel a sudden gold rush, or perhaps more like a rupee rush, so he decides to squeeze himself inside his green tights and set on a mission to fulfill his new objective (the only one he ever had in his life): reach Rupeeland and live the dolce vita until the end of time, although soon we will discover that all that glitters is not a rupee. As you can see, Tingle and Link have nothing in common, but that doesn´t mean Tingle doesn´t have weapons of his own, and just as Link can count on his courage, bravery and strength, Tingle also has a great virtue, well, actually is more like fault, and a big one, but in Tingle´s case is the fuel that helps him to overcome any obstacle that he finds on his path to Rupeeland, and that is greediness. Any of you who have played the recent Zelda game will be surely aware of Tingle´s dirty negotiating tactics when it comes to sell us maps, for Tingle´s greediness knows no limits, till the point where he makes Scrooge McDuck look like he´s working for charity. For Tingle, every single rupee counts, and he will do anything it takes to get as many as he cans, and that will be the main point of the game´s gameplay: getting the necessary rupees to reach Rupeeland.

We will have to throw rupees inside the pond till the tower reaches Rupeeland.

We will visit again the Great Deku Tree.

As I said before, Tingle in Rupeeland is basically an Action-RPG, although to be sincere, the game is so “abstract” (you just have to look at the title), that is difficult to define exactly the genre of this game. To obtain all the rupees Tingle needs to reach Rupeeland, we will have to explore the world as we fulfill the quests that are assigned to us by the characters that we will meet during our adventures, each more weird than the previous one. On top of that, just like in any Zelda game, we will have to complete several dungeons filled up with traps and puzzles in order to obtain the magical gems that we will need to open the portal that will take us to Rupeeland once the tower is tall enough. Each dungeon will have its own boss, and just like any Zelda game again, each will have its own weakness. These bosses will definitely be one of the highlights of the game, for they are really varied and imaginative, again just like in any Zelda game. On top of fulfilling missions for the NPC characters, we will also be able to sell the items we will find during our adventures to get some extra rupees, on top of combining the items we find to create new one in order to sell them for a better price. For that purpose we will be able to make use of a unique “negotiating system”, for everything in Tingle in Rupeeland has got a price. EVERYTHING. As opposite to what we can see in many games in which the prices are always set, in Tingle in Rupeeland it will be us who always sets a price for everything, from buying and selling items, to even obtaining information or rewards from the villagers, so you better start forgetting about those friendly villagers that are willing to give you all kind of information for free, in Tingle in Rupeeland, or you show the money, or you really get no honey. The

Tingle in the middle of some serious negotiations.

game doesn´t actually include any tutorial about how to make deals, so it´s up to the players always to judge how much something is worth. If we are lucky, we will be able to get stuff for a good price, but if we are too greedy, they will refuse our offer, although they will keep the money we offered “as a compensation for their time”, in fact, we can even run the risk of getting no reward AT ALL after completing a quest, so if we are not careful, our trip to Rupeeland will have to wait for quite a while. As for the combat system, on contrary to Link, who is a master of the sword and the bow, well, and the bombs, and the boomerang, and the... anyway, Tingle´s fighting style is “ much less sophisticated”, throwing random kicks and punches like a rabid kindergarten kid as soon as we touch an enemy, which will result in Tingle and the enemy fighting inside a huge ball of dust similar to what can be seen in many cartoons. While the fight is taking place, we will have to quickly tap on the screen in order to beat the enemy. Tingle doesn´t have the typical “health” that most video game characters have, rather than this, when Tingle gets into a fight and gets hurt, he will lose something that is more important to him than health itself: his beloved rupees. If we run out of rupees while we fight, we will “die”. As you can see, not even the combat system is safe from the kinkiness of the game. We will also be able to hire bodyguards (if you can call that a bodyguard) that will help us to fight the enemies during our adventures, provided we pay the right price for it, of course. I´m sorry, but you can save the typical “lets fight the bad guys together for the sake of justice”, here it just doesn´t work. The better the bodyguard is, the more expensive his services will be, but like I said, given their looks, you will sometimes wonder if you would be better off alone... Bodyguards will be controlled by the AI of the game, attacking the nearby enemies or aiding Tingle when he gets into a fight himself, or even helping him with some puzzles in the dungeons, and as contrary to Tingle, they will have the typical health hearts of the Zelda series, and once these run out, they contract will “finish”.

The only town in the game. Now it might sound bad, but when you meet the villagers, you will be glad is the only one...

Like I said, he´ll do just anything for a few rupees...

As for the graphics of the game, Tingle in Rupeeland makes use of really colorful and detailed sprites and 2D backgrounds, but the most significant point of Tingle´s adventure is it´s art direction, for even Tingle surely is a weird dude, the rest of characters are just even more weird, kinda till the point where they make you think Tingle is actually not so bad, in fact, many characters look like they have directly come out of one of Picasso´s paintings, well, actually, I don´t think even Picasso would be able to come up with something so twisted, which together with the “eclectic sounds” of the soundtrack, will surely make you wonder many times if what you are smoking is really tobacco. To tell you the truth, when you look well at the whole game, you really wonder what the f*** were the producers thinking about while they were designing the game, specially when you think that this is the spin-off of a series that is among video game´s industry finest, for even the Zelda series really made some experiments, this is surely one of the weirdest games Nintendo has ever produced in their long history, in fact is so much so that even Nintendo America decided not to take their chances and didn´t publish the game in the American market, which in my humble opinion was a huge mistake, for even the game is surely unique, I think is by far one of Nintendo most original creations in a looong time, a game that reflects perfectly Nintendo´s innovating spirit, proving that when Nintendo really wants, they are capable of creating something else than “just another Mario game”, and I think that is something to really admire in these times where creativity is almost exclusively at the service of the almighty profits. Actually, despite its kinkiness, Tingle in Rupeeland was a commercial success in Japan, but then again Japan is well known for its kinkiness, anyway, the Japanese received a sequel also for Nintendo DS. As opposite to the first game, the sequel was not an Action-RPG, but rather a... adventure, just to call it something, because the game is even more hilarious than the one I just talked about, in fact, it was so weird that this time not even Nintendo Europe dared to edit it in the European market. Anyway, if you have a DS (or 3DS) and you want to play something truly different, then I recommend you Tingle´s adventure a 100%. It´s a game that is difficult to be described with words, but for good or bad, I´m sure it will definitely not be a game that you will forget about easily. The American players have the option to import the European version, since it contains English and it´s region free for the Nintendo DS and DS Lite models. Enjoy!


GAMEPLAY VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVJOpCcntU4