He’s manly!

You could say that I recently had an epiphany. For some reason the planets aligned in a certain way and I nearly felt like wearing a green spandex suit, but luckily I only needed to play Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland for the Nintendo DS to stop this awful craving. I know many of you readers out there are most likely weary of the 35 year old man, but let’s discuss his game for a bit to find out it isn’t all bad.

Introduction

After an introduction screen that’s enough to make Georgle Clooney ga– For the record, I’ll refrain from using homophobic terms from now on. Anyway, after the very colorful and ‘happy’ introduction screen you are presented with a screen that tell you to input your name. No, you’re not allowed to use Tingle. This is where I wanted to call him fa– ciggeratte, but much to my dismiss I called him ‘Maarten’. I’m just hoping that in the future people won’t confuse me with that green spandex wearing person.

You wake up in a house and a voice tells you to go to the West Spring to escape this ‘boring’ life. If by boring they mean relaxed and calm, then I’m afraid I’d pass but of course this wasn’t a possibility and I was soon told to go the spring anyway. At the spring an old man with a rupee-shaped head tells me of Rupeeland: a land filled with not only the most delicious food and the most beautiful women, but there’s also no need to work. To enter Rupeeland you have to accept Uncle Rupee’s offer to collect rupees for him and throw them in the pool. Of course this is a totally honest agreement that definitely won’t backfire on poor ‘Maarten’. After agreeing lightning strikes and you transform into -  Henshin a Go Go Baby! – …Tingle.

Apparently the name ‘Maarten’ is boring and no longer needed (D:) and your quest for hunting Rupees begins.

It’s all about the Rupees! It’s all about the dum dum duh dee dum dum

Where do you begin hunting for Rupees, you ask? Why not start with the town? As soon as you enter town a guard stops and surprisingly asks you for rupees. Oookay, I guess it’s just toll or something. Want to speak to the town’s blacksmith; you need rupees. Want to talk to the Chef; you need rupees. Seriously! Best of all they all don’t specify how much they actually want. If you don’t give them enough they’ll keep the rupees and ask you to try again, and if you give too many they’ll of course agree, but you’ll get ripped off. This isn’t all that annoying in the beginning, but as the game progresses the amount they ask just becomes higher and higher. Oh, I forgot to mention something… Once you run out of rupees you apparently die, because ‘Tingle needs rupees to survive. This makes me wonder how rupees keep Tingle alive. Does he eat them or something?… better not question something like this before I start regretting it.

One way to start making rupees is by cooking. Three bones for example make a ‘Tingle Fireworks’ which sells for about 36 rupees. The bones are easily obtained by defeating enemies, which brings to me an interesting point; combat. Tingle doesn’t have a sword, he doesn’t have a gun, simply puy he has no weapons at all. When you approach an enemy combat immediately starts and both Tingle and the enemy will form a cloud of dust. The longer you’re in combat, the more rupees you lose. This is where things get interesting because batteling just enemy will always end in Tingle losing some rupees. When you fight multiple enemies at the same time the rewards increase a great deal and will even yeild in profit.

When there’s too many enemies or the enemies are too strong for Tingle, you might want to hire a bodyguard. Bear in mind that these bodyguards won’t work for free and once they run out of energy, they require more rupees from you. As you can probably tell the combat system isn’t very amazing, but it’s unique and gets the job done.

One of the biggest annoyances in the game is the negotiation system. Basically people start asking money and you don’t know how much they want. I vented about this a bit before, but it really is a nerve wrecking system. Perhaps even worse is the reward system where you can input how many rupees you want as an award. Ask too much and they’ll only give you1 rupee… ONE FRIGGIN’ RUPEE. Another thing that annoys me is the tower/pool. Once you’ve put enough rupees in the pool a tower forms that’ll eventually lead to Rupeeland. The annoying thing here is that the tower needs rupees every now and then, and it has to be quite a bit too otherwise it just keeps saying ‘not enough’. People have been theorizing about a possible tax that increases depending on how much time you spend exploring.

The game certainly refers to the Zelda series a lot, because all the places are names after Hyrulian locations and the game even features the Zelda ‘get item’ and ‘found secret’ themes. The dungeons are lineair, but of good length and feature original puzzles… Still, I personally would consider it a simple spin-off.

The visuals are of good quality and are mostly 2D. The locations and characters are all very nicely animated and especially Tingle moves real smoothly.  The music and sound effects are nothing amazing, but are decent and don’t get on your nerves, which is always a good thing. I’d say the game is about 15-20 hours long depending on how much time you spend exploring and looking for rupees.

The story, while weird, manages to stay interesting until the end and has some interesting plotchanges. I won’t spoil anything for you guys, but Uncle Rupee is obviously not who he seems to be.

Should you buy Tingle’s DS debut? The game never saw a US release so finding it might be difficult for some people, but if you do find it don’t think twice about picking it up! Unlike what many people think, Tingle is a funny and somewhat charming character and I sincerely hope that the second DS game will see a release here in Europe. Sure, the game annoys at times, but it’s a unique experience that’ll definitely surprise you in a good way.

I don’t feel like grading games because I honestly know people don’t agree with my opinion, but I’d give it a solid 8/10 if I did. Har har.