Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland - Packaging

The dark corner of ZE that is the Rosy Rupeeland section has been updated with new scans of the game’s UK packaging. Just remember to wash your eyes on the way out.

A few days ago (Sorry for the delay, I started uni recently), Nintendo unveiled the trophies section of Smash Bros Brawl. Wind Waker fans will be pleased to know that one of the trophies included in the screenshots was a Wind Waker-style Tingle.

Well, yes, I know no-one likes Tingle, but this trophy does hint that there may be more Wind Waker content in Brawl, such as characters or levels. Or it may mean nothing at all, as there were plenty Trophies in the previous Smash Bros that featured as nothing more than that, trophies. However, it’s interesting speculation, and Wind Waker fans are bound to be pleased at the inclusion of these trophies, as there is sure to be more.

As a bonus, another Zelda-style trophy was shown in the screenshots - the incredibly scary alien-like Ooccoo from Twilight Princess.

Remember, Phantom Hourglass comes out in America tomorrow!

Today, or rather, in an hour, Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland is released in European territories. While there are no plans to release the game in the US, there is now an official English language version availible, which American fans may want to import…

Aw, don’t complain! You get plenty games us Europeans don’t, and we need to wait months longer for everything but the biggest titles! Speaking of which, also released by Nintendo today is Super Paper Mario for the Wii, which, to be honest, is probably more worthy of your money.

The good news is that NoE have launched the European website for Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland in anticipation for the game’s release on the 14th September. On it, you can find a story overview, character profiles, and other details that were previously shrouded under the puzzle of Moonspeak. The site also promises to feature an exclusive interview with the developers Vanpool in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for that.

The bad news is that NoE has a habit of turning everything it touches into crap. The last Zelda game they translated for an early European release was The Minish Cap, and when NoA came to release it in America their translation department Treehouse were forced to clean the text up because it was so lifeless. It remains to be seen whether the talentless hacks have butchered another Nintendo classic or whether Tingle’s rainbow-coloured light continues to shine brightly.

Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland - Packaging

Nintendo has released the French boxart for Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland, with exactly the same amount of camp as the Japanese version. Hard sale.

Tingle’s Balloon Fight

On the off chance that you’ve grown tired of all the Phantom Hourglass coverage that’s blitzing the internet at the moment, we’ve decided to take this oppertunity to create a page for the most obscure Zelda spin-off yet. While it will be old news to most of you, we’ve created the definitive Tingle’s Balloon Fight page, or as definitive as the current state of Nintendo DS emulation will allow. I expect once hackers free Tingle from the confines of the upper-left corner, we’ll be able to show you some action shots from the game. Still, you can see that for a freebie, Nintendo used a surprising amount of the ol’ spit-polish to get this one sparkling.

If all this Tingle-lovin-lovin has left you groaning, Play-Asia have crossed their heart that they’ll dispatch a copy of Phantom Hourglass on the day commonly known as tomorrow, which means I should be cutting swathes through moon-language and Octoroks this time next week. I’ll be sure to tell you all about it using letters and words and pictures and hyperlinks and stuff.

Tingle RPG - Packaging

Ha! Fooled you! All you get is some Tingle packaging artwork! Though, it does look pretty cool.

My further Tingle adventures have grinded to a halt - for some reason I can’t hire any bodyguards, and I desperately need to. The second dungeon is owning me. I strolled on in, all proud and stuff, then remembered it’d charge me to get in. 500 rupees just to have my ass handed to me? No thanks. It seems like I have to find some way to get the bodyguards talking to me, and before that, I’ll have to spend some time bulking up my wallet. The game’s financial system is still proving bothersome, but language barriers can generally be broken with a quick skim of the GameFAQs forums (just remember protection).

The other day I thought it’d be a good idea to import Tingle RPG. I wouldn’t be able to play it thanks to the language barrier, but the packaging media would come in handy, right? Well, it arrived this morning, so I dutifully scanned away, then returned the insert and manual back to their box, sending the recompleted package to the top of my DS pile, never to be opened again. An hour later, grasped in the mind-numbing claws of boredom, I decided that hey, what’s in a language barrier?

Well, as it turns out, not as much as you’d think. Admittedly, I’ve only managed to finish the first (and frighteningly short) dungeon, and most of my understanding as to what on earth is going on has come from this Game|Life report. Yet I’m still fairly impressed that I’ve stumbled (or staggered, or meandered) as far as I have.

The first thing I should mention is that this game is full of charm. The graphics are vivid and alive, easily making Tingle RPG the best looking 2D Zelda game yet. It dwarfs anything seen in Phantom Hourglass, in all its pixelated, boxy 3D glory. Because everything is so clear and vibrant, character oozes from both Tingle and his supporting cast. The cartoon style pioneered in The Wind Waker can only be recreated using sprites on the DS. Expression and diversity is the chef’s special, and Tingle RPG serves it up in its own fantastically bizarre style. You know a game’s special when you can recruit a green-skinned, purple-lipped bodyguard to help you through a dungeon, who whips out a colour-coordinated boom box to play that tune whenever you solve a puzzle. More than that, the game has a certain atmosphere that proves that even cold, heartless capitalism can provide a warm embrace: while listening to the birds as I walked through the seaside town, I realised that only the DS’s tinny speakers distinguished them from the happy singing outside my window.

As much as I’m falling in love with the game, there are certain things that bug me. My main point of contention is the ‘guess-my-price’ mechanic - the first thing I want to do after making out of a dungeon with exactly 1111 rupees is to run home and save my game, knowing full-well that a couple of wrong offers could decimate my balance (which doubles as Tingle’s life), but of course, my super-sized bodyguard gets stuck in the doorway on our way out. For some reason, he needs payment. His fair cut? I don’t know, but ultimately he can muster enough energy to force his way out the door. With the right offer. Somehow, he manages to siphon away failed offers, leaving me 200 rupees down, 100 short of the amount needed to make the money tower raise another level, bringing me that much closer to Rupee Paradise. I should have let the fat bugger rot - I wasn’t the one stuck in a door, and I certainly wasn’t coming back in a hurry. Another sore moment came in a room full of spikes that jut up from the ground as you walk near them. “Easy,” I thought, “just like in Zelda.” Well, in Zelda, you don’t have to contend with some truly awful collision detection, and I don’t remember bouncing between spikes, losing 8 rupees each time.

But no matter. These nit-picks are, while bloody annoying, hardly game-breaking. Like the language barrier, these quirks will be worked around because there’s so much awesome here. I’ve never understood Tingle, I don’t understand the game, I don’t understand the setting, what it’s trying to say to me, or why my guide is clearly a transvestite (but fantastic boob-job, you go girl), but I do understand that I want, nay, need to see everything there is of this game, to do all there is to do, and to eventually get Tingle into the paradise he deserves.

Viva Kooloo-limpah!

Tingle’s Freshly-Picked Rose-Coloured Rupee Land
 
The latest issue of Rauru’s Return’s Harkinian Zelda zine will feature a comment by me saying that I didn’t know quite what to make of the game better known as Tingle RPG, and until such a time, I’d hold off covering it on this site. Well, I’ve since decided that I don’t think I’ll ever quite know what to make of the game, so instead, I’ll just cover it and let other people decide. Don’t mind the eye-blazing splash page - it doesn’t quite fit in with the site’s palette but I doubt the game will fit in with anyone’s palette. Quite suitable, then.