Rupeeland on earth

Uncle Rupee is no more. As illusory as Rupeeland wound up being, if the ending of the game is any indication, Tingle went on to use the 800,000+ rupees gathered throughout the game to live it up - doing all of the things that Uncle Rupee had promised him. With that in mind, it's no wonder that Tingle's broke by the time the sequel starts. Oh, yes, there is a sequel to Rosy Rupeeland, but it never left Japan. A shame, since Color Changing Tingle's Love Balloon Trip's Wizard of Oz basis makes it a very curious thing. 

As per the boss of Rosy Rupeeland, Uncle Rupee himself, the fight is actually a let down. It's a three stage fight (as any good final boss should be, right?), and done in a bullet-hell style...in space! The battle's setting is really cool, particularly the fact that the tower rockets off into the great unknown, rams through the moon and stops once the top gets through the far side. So, like another odd Zelda game, this one ends on the moon (sort of). 

I'm not sure if it was because I brought along so many rupees, or because Tingle and Uncle Rupee's attacks moved like they were in a light syrup, but all three stages of the fight were underwhelming. With 800,000+ HP, it's hard to feel like things are that dire, even if you wind up with just 200,000 by the battle's end. 

Interestingly, though, before the fight Uncle Rupee asks for your rupees. You can give him none or some (or nearly all). Handing over some of your cash would make the fight more challenging. Still, after all of the other boss fights and their innovative mechanics, just floating around and holding the stylus to the screen to shoot is pretty lame. 

Overall, though, Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland is a great game, so long as you can get past the rupees-for-everything mechanic. Its weirdness is a great reward for sticking with it.

Rupee goods rewarded

Thanks to a happy coincidence what looked like it was going to take two sessions to finish only took one (of a rather great length, mind). Except for the final boss (and the non-achievement of contracting all of the bodyguards), I've finished 100% of Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland!

In the end, once I'd gathered all of the necessary ingredients for the game's local specialities, the merchant working for the pirates gave me the last bottle in the game - bottle number 23. So, along with the fat stacks I'm now carrying from selling all of those specialities (Tingle's packing 300+ Gs), I was also given the three star sticker. This I redeemed from the alleged inventor of empty jars for the final rupee good: the Crown Bottle Cap.

With all the rupee goods thus collected, that mysterious door at the Auros Ruins beckoned. Upon answering its call, I was treated to quite the scene.

For you see, that door, unlocked only by collecting all of the rupee goods, leads to the room where Pinkle's been kept for the whole game. She rewards you with...well, see for yourselves (jump to 12:55):



To top that off, she also sends a hologram of herself to Tingle's house where it stands and waves - moving just enough to trigger some 2D jiggle. Yes, this is a Nintendo game.

Getting the goods

In my quest to get all of the "Rupee Goods" in Rosy Rupeeland, I have nearly reached completion. I have just two more to get and then the most important of the game's extra challenges will have been achieved.

Unfortunately, the two remaining "Rupee Goods" are rewards for fetch quests. One quest requires me to get all of the game's empty bottles (surely only two or three are currently outstanding). For the other, I just need to cook up all of the local specialities recipes and sell them to the merchant who's working with the pirates. Between the two of them, the bottle fetch quest is going to much easier.

Cooking things as complex as local specialities (complex because they sell for quite a few rupees) requires many ingredients. Even if each speciality's raw parts are in the same locale, it can be hard to wrangle the necessary beasties. A lot of enemies shy away from you as you get near, and only drop worthwhile items when taken on in groups. Other enemies, like the vaguely demonic wood ducks in the Steamy Marsh, do things like up and fly away from you before exploding in midair (because of the ducks' "Explosive Claws" they sometimes drop, I guess).

Needless to say, I've got one more session with Tingle and his very own game before I face down Uncle Rupee in boss form.

Payoff from bridges and maps

Surprise after surprise has rolled out as Rosy Rupeeland wraps up. The two biggest ones are related to sidequests, but the game's rupee-based play greatly rewards such quests, so they're much closer to the game's main line than such things can be in other games.

The first surprise came with the discovery of Duke, Duko, and Judge's dad - the Foreman. He demands that his sons pay you back the rupees that you paid them to build bridges, and they pay out handsomely. A nearly 80,000 rupee boost made the battle with the Oinker Boss absolutely no problem. It was a battle that relied more on evasion than anything else, but as mentioned before, Tingle's not the most agile of video game heroes. So it was a challenging bout nonetheless.

The second shock came as I bought back the final finished map. The map making shop in the game's hub town is run by the map maker's widow. Each time you buy back a map you've finished she mentions that it was their dream to map the whole world. Well, once you help them to accomplish this they reunite.

The mapmaker's widow dies on the spot, her ghost appears on the top screen and then she says that she's going to her husband's grave. A phantom map drops into her grasp from above, she says that she won't get lost thanks to it, and then she vanishes. This sequence slackened my jaw pretty successfully - you don't expect such emotional scenes in a game about a guy in a green one-piece leotard running around collecting cash, jewel by jewel.

Now, with the game's maps being completed, I'm now going to get all of the Rupee Goods before I bring down a rain of pain upon Uncle Rupee.

Map making and skullduggery

Tingle, the character first introduced to Zelda fans as a map seller (and maker), must have some kind of auto-detailing app installed in his map-drawing pencil. Whenever you come across a landmark all you need to do is crack open the map and draw a circle around it. The actual details appear in a sparkle of fairy dust. Nonetheless, the game's mapping gets tricky later on. Landmarks are still fairly obvious, but as areas get bigger, those landmarks become more and more out of your way. Thankfully their price with the town's map seller goes up accordingly.

Although the Auros Ruins can't be finished until the Oinker Boss has been dealt with, I figure that finishing the rest of the maps will be preparation enough to face him again. If I can break 100,000 rupees, then I'm sure that I'll be able to make it through.

Brewing up some Mega Tingly's a good idea, too. In fact, it's an especially good one since it sounds like it can revive a bodyguard who's lost all heart. Getting the skulls needed for it isn't as easy as getting the bones needed for Tingly, though - those things can be found all over the place.

Foiled in smashing the piggy banker

Tingle's no action hero, but I wish he could walk faster. In part this wish comes from his slow waddle through town being a bit tedious to watch when you're trying to hurry through the last few sidequests. But, I also wish that the guy in green could move faster so that his dodging would be better.

The game's penultimate boss (or so it seems right now) is the Oinker Boss. This guy looks like something of a hippie but has a huge sprite - so you know he's a boss or just not in his right mind. Actually, his design is reminiscent of the two young oinkers that he forced out of the group, both dressed like flower children on the cusp of being wed. Which, as per the story, that exiled couple in fact is - but they need someone to retrieve their special item before the wedding ceremony can take place. Of course, Tingle's all too happy to oblige.

Facing this Oinker Boss really seemed like a good idea before I knew about his devastating 3000 rupee burning attack. 20,000 rupees just wasn't enough to try to finish the Auros Ruins with, since the two mêlées that came before the duel with the Boss brought me down to a mere 10,000. Luckily, though Tingle's slow he's not foolishly heroic, and can ride his balloons all the way home in such tight spots.

After selling everything that wasn't nailed down or required for a later recipe, I've regained something of my previous wealth. 80,000 should be enough to march in and flatten the Oinker Boss. Then, then, it's onto the no doubt easier final boss. At least, so long as the final boss is faced in an arena other than the usual overworld map.

The pull through

I have seen the dizzying heights of rupee wealth. Now, now I am once more on the bottom of the barrel. Uncle Rupee's designs to get rich off of the sweat of the working "Tingle" class aside, the costs of things near the end of Rosy Rupeeland are exorbitant. How anyone could get to a million rupees in this game is beyond me, to do so you'd need to grind so hard that were it broadcast on a prominent awards show you would end up the focus of incredible backlash.

Though, the cost of the last few bits of Rosy Rupeeland is the only thing that's difficult about them. There are some tricky fights ahead, to be sure, but they aren't going to require much more than well timed and furious tapping to get through them. Nonetheless, this apparently anticlimactic remnant is what I've come to expect from the end of most adventure games.

After all, once you've been playing for long enough, the mechanics become familiar. You'll learn their ins and outs, and maybe pick up some tricks or shortcuts to get through particularly sticky bits over the course of an adventure, then, come the end, you just use what you've learned and face the final puzzle that is that last baddie.

A Link to the Past offers a great example of what I mean here.

Once you've reached the point where you're about to fight Ganon, the savvy player will get the golden sword along with the silver arrows, dive into the Pyramid, and use what he or she knows about all of the game's items to handily deal with the trident wielding pig demon. That last fight has some challenge to it, but it's the same sort of challenge offered by a cumulative maths test in high school; only in the rarest case will such a challenge include new material.

As such, my current feeling of Rosy Rupeeland's story pulling me toward the end rather than any further deep challenge is just what I've come to expect from these last bits of such games.

A tingly theory

As it turns out, Uncle Rupee's grand plan isn't to bring Tingle to the paradisical Rupeeland. In reality, Rupeeland is a place of slavery. It's what Uncle Rupee wants to turn the world into so that everyone will be forced to gather rupees to feed his greed. In fact, Uncle Rupee's ultimate goal is to turn everyone into a Tingle - something especially terrifying for Western gamers.

All of that doom-saying aside, the game says, precisely, "a Tingle." Yes, "a Tingle," not "Tingles." This means that "Tingle" isn't a person, but rather a thing, some sort of entity; an entity possibly like "The Hero of Time."

This little insight, though questionably canonical, does suggest that there's some sort of cultural bleed through between the worlds of Termina and Hyrule. After all, Tingle first appeared in Majora's Mask, the game that introduced the land of Termina. He then appears in Minish Cap and The Wind Waker.

Setting aside the former game, Tingle isn't the only thing from Termina in the Hyrule of The Wind Waker. The game's Phantom Ganon uses a sword apparently made by Zubora and Gabora, the blacksmiths from the foot of Snowhead in Termina.

Clearly there's some kind of dimensional crossover here. Perhaps the reason Tingle's not in so many of the Zelda games if looked at chronologically is because of Hyrule's cultural cycle. Tingle could be a one-off in Termina, but recurs in Hyrule whenever the Master Sword needs powering up. Perhaps it's a process that requires an influx of energy from the Termina dimension, thus causing the idea of Tingle to enter Hyrule's zeitgeist, and imprinting Phantom Ganon's sword with a maker's mark from Termina. Thus, Tingle is an entity born of an energy influx (or exchange) between dimensions (at least in mainstream Zelda titles).

What do you think? Feel free to leave your own thoughts on the question of what Tingle is in the comments.

Freshly picked prognostications

Pinkle (from the Zeldapedia).

Rosy Rupeeland's
Great Fairy (from the Zelda Wiki).

So the Great Fairy of whatever world Tingle lives in (Termina?) looks like Pinkle. Or Pinkle, the female Tingle who lives inside the computer in Tingle's house, looks like the Great Fairy. The elemental fairies themselves look like power rangers, each representing one of the game's five Super Rupees.

Sinking deeper into Rosy Rupeeland's strange likenesses, Uncle Rupee's latest appearance was striking. Rather than another show of his increasingly empowering wealth, he's shown with only his loins girded, surrounded by floating rupees on a background of concentric rainbow circles. That most recent appearance, and the Great Fairy's complaint about the world's balance of rupees being off has cemented good ol' Uncle Rupee's place as the game's final boss.

It'll be revealed that he's been having Tingle on the whole time. Then, given how the game's gone so far regarding women, Uncle Rupee probably tries to buy Pinkle with all of his money, she refuses, is kidnapped, and needs to get Tingle to step in with the righteous power of balancing rupees to save her, defeat Uncle Rupee, and restore the world's rupee balance.

What I'm left wondering is, as an accessory to Uncle Rupee's scheme, will Tingle get any comeuppance?

A mad magma dash

Thankfully, the latest dungeon, Desma's Labyrinth mixes things up. The puzzles are multi-floor since the dungeon's set in a giant mountain, the enemies require some strategy, and the boss is completely unlike any other before it.

Incredibly annoyingly, the boss isn't a battle so much as it is a frantic escape sequence. You're at the base of the mountain's interior and the Fire Monster Dora Dora appears, at which point you need to slingshot Tingle from handle to handle to escape Dora Dora and the rising lava. At the end of this race to the top (during which Dora Dora will stop at nearly nothing to knock you off of your handle and into the rising fiery tide), the Fire Monster follows you into the open air where it cools off, turns to stone and breaks down into glorious glorious rupees. Then, because this is Rosy Rupeeland, you control Tingle as he free-falls through the air collecting rupees.

So the game's picking up again as it winds down in terms of its mechanics. This feels like a final dungeon, since the boss was so different from the rest and it took about an hour to finish (including a detour into the Bodyguard Salon to change my medium-sized guard for a small one so I could clean out Desma's Labyrinth. So what comes next should be easier, or at least quicker.

Super Rupees?

I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a mark of primitivism or of a super advanced civilization, but on Mt. Desma there's a village of rupee loving people. These people love rupees far more than those living in the town because they don't just trade rupees for useful items and information, but for every little interaction. The one beside the village entrance charges for a greeting, three vendors charge 150 rupees for relatively common items, and in the village inn there's a person who charges you to listen to him snore. Truly, this, the Yamatami tribe, is a people which loves their rupees.

Other than that, it feels like I'm just playing this game to finish it. It's not that I don't enjoy it, but there's another dungeon coming up, and outside of featuring the Tingle-slingshot minigame used to get up parts of Mt. Desma, it'll probably the same as the other dungeons. After all, each dungeon's just a means to get big rupees, and the next Super Rupee. Though, come to think of it, I'm not even sure what function the Super Rupees serve in the game.

When you throw rupees into the fountain to access new areas, you don't throw in your latest Super Rupees, just a set amount of regular rupees. They don't grant Tingle any extra abilities, and you can't sell them to get more readily usable rupees. What are they there for?

The only obvious answer is that they're Macguffins. Even then, though, just how they're arbitrary items you're collecting to move the game along is unclear. They've got to somehow relate to the final boss, but in just what way remains unclear.

Pushing onward in Rosy Rupeeland

It's never been a big deal in Rosy Rupeeland that Tingle's just a normal guy. His outfit is commented on every now and then, but otherwise he's never really noted. Among the amalgam of Tingle's non-notable characteristics, his strength is a great candidate for the most unremarkable.

Now, barrels full of gun powder are definitely heavy, but Tingle's lack of strength means that he pushes them around as slowly as everything else he pushes. Normally, the speed at which you can push things around doesn't matter. But in the mini-boss fight on Tingle's second visit to the Pirate Ship, his begrudging shoving around of barrel-sized grenades is terrible.

The only way to progress the battle is to catch the bug-possessed captain skull in a chain explosion of at least five of the grenades. However, along with Tingle's moving the barrels about, the skittering skull nudges them when it bounces off of them, and your bodyguard pushes them out of place as he or she walks past. So to finish the battle I had to patiently line up the barrels, use my bodyguard to nudge the boss into the enclosure and then quickly set off the chain.

Looking back, it's fair to say that that miniboss is Rosy Rupeeland's Moldorm. Yes, the incredibly frustrating boss from A Link to the Past and The Wind Waker. It's had other appearances, but those two are the most difficult since it thrashes wildly about and either knocks you off of its platform, or is just simply frantic in 3D.

With a mountaintop dungeon ahead, though, a giant multi-sectional worm boss isn't out of the question. So there may be something more Moldorm-like on the way.

Fewer rupees, further along

My progress through Rosy Rupeeland continues unabated. There's really very little else to say.

The third continent's been opened up, and the end of the game (though still weeks of play away) rises into view.

My rupees took a serious hit, recently though. I'd just passed 100,000 and then had to give some 80,000 away to grow the tower higher. At least now it's at the same level as the cloud ceiling. Tingle must have some serious pipes to be able to breathe while up that high.

Also, there's been a marked lack of aggressive mid-sized bodyguards in the salons lately. The large ones are now just about useless (aside from their size) since the Tingle Bomb recipe's been found. But Tingle himself still has no means of unlocking doors. Or of squeezing into small places, mind you, but the small bodyguards are too often dogs and they can't be brought around the skeleton pirates. That's only problematic when you've got a local speciality cooked up and ready to sell, but there's also a bit coming up where Tingle helps them out somehow. The rock telepath on Mt. Desma's reference to a pirate's cannon makes that pretty clear.

Tingle the catalyst

Any widely acclaimed Legend of Zelda movie can never star Link and Zelda. Their story has enough to it, but both characters have taken various different shapes in the minds of players. Instead, to succceed and to capture the essence of any Zelda game, the movie's focus would have to be a side character. Maybe Anju, or Malon, or Marin and Tarin.

Thankfully, Rosy Rupeeland shares this trait with the mainstream Zelda series.

The "get enough rupees to never have to work again" story leaves Tingle's character largely untouched by development. We learn more about him since he stars in the game (and by it's nature as a spinoff, we already know much of his character), but secondary characters are given much more depth.

Take for example the town's guard. He does little, but buys a lost button and medicinal potions for his wife from Tingle, and fights a fierce phantom for her sake. In the latter event, Tingle is reduced to a spectator and sidekick.

Ultimately, this kind of character development in the place of plot development works as well in Rosy Rupeeland as it does in other Zelda titles. Characters add colour to the world the plot builds, after all.

Under-your-nose obscurity

Requiring rupees for everything is one thing. Being obscure about where things need to be done is another. Thankfully, most Zelda games only feature the former. Rosy Rupeeland has a habit of mixing the two, unfortunately.

Where you need to dump the Super Soup in the Icy Plains graveyard is a prime example of this combination. You need rupees for the information/event trigger, and to buy the recipee involved. Then you need to work out where exactly you need to dump out a bottle of Super Soup to stir Chiko's grandmother's soul.

At first, my Zelda-honed instincts told me to dump it on the frozen headstone at the graveyard's end. But this had no effect.

After watching this blunder play out, I realized that an Icy Plains landmark resembled Chiko's clan quite closely.

So now I know what needs to be done (and have confirmed it with a guide), but still feel like I've somehow been foiled by Rosy Rupeeland's under-your-nose obscurity.

Adding items to the list

Rosy Rupeeland's to-do list gameplay is starting to veer into fetch quest territory. But, it's doing so because of my own playing.

I need to make some soup for one of the townsfolk (Chiko's Mum), and have to collect the ingredients. Having thoroughly explored the Icy Plain, making this soup and handing it off will no doubt lead to the melting of the frozen headstone found in the graveyard. This defrosting definitely has to move the story forward, possibly leading to another dungeon, or possibly just working through some character stuff so that Chiko's Mum can get more depth.

Once again, I'm struck by how hard and frustrating this game would be without a guide. Not necessarily a walkthrough, but a guide to the best prices for things. Paying the least and asking the most possible makes the game easier to handle and takes away the danger of having to earn way more rupees than you'd need to actually finish the game. Collecting ingredients and items incidentally is great for this, but having to actually hunt them down is just bland.

The enemy designs are curious though. The Icy Plains are home to penguins that act like Oinkers, charging at you until they strike or hit a wall, and to weird polar bear/turtle hybrids. At least, that's how it looks.

So Rosy Rupeeland is starting to slow, but it's also nearing its end. Thankfully, part of my reason for playing this one through is to see the final boss and that's something that won't change. I'm confident the game'll live up to my expectations, too.

My DS is not solar powered

Let's be honest here. Playing portable video games in the sun has never been a good idea.

Using real sunlight in a game (see Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hands) is a neat concept, but neat concepts don't make non-backlit screens easier to see in the great outdoors.

That's why I automatically flicked my DS off after resuming a slumbering session of Rosy Rupeeland while waiting for the bus. That's got to be why. Some deep part of my brain knew I'd give myself eye strain, or, much more immediately true, that I couldn't see anything no matter how much I wanted to.

And there's a lot to see in Icy Plain.

It's the game's required ice area, but nonetheless has plenty to discover within it. There're the landmarks to map, a bridge to build, an Oinker stronghold, and plenty of enemies to scrap with for scrap items. On top of all that, there's a blizzard that blocks your sight over a patch of the area that's a network of land bridges, and the initiating event for a second continent-wide sidequest to find the lost pieces of a broken airship.

Thankfully I'd only scratched the frosty surface of the Icy Plain before sun-blindly powering down my DS.

A tingling conscience

Retracing my steps through the Insect Cavern to get what I'd lost along with my DS' battery power was easy. But the boss at the end of it all put up a true fight.

It was a return to the first boss, where Tingle has to drop bombs on the gnarled face lodged in the shell of a giant bug.

Ten balloons hold our green leotard-wearing hero up, and if they all pop then you have to begin the fight all over again. Ten balloons are enough, for sure, but the boss has two phases and your balloons carry over rather than being refreshed. Since there are some bullet hell elements to the boss fight, and Tingle's slower when he's lugging a bomb, the spread of little spherical bullets can be hard to avoid. Balloons will be burst. Plus, if Tingle's hit while carrying, the bomb explodes and he's thrown back.

It was a tough one, but not too hard a nut to crack.

Curiously though, halfway through delving into the dungeon again, Tingle's bodyguard got knocked out. At first, I left him where he lay, knowing that there would be no consequences for doing so.

My conscience got the better of me one room later, at which point I went back, found him, and paid to revive him. Though after that neither he nor Tingle saw any combat, since all was clear from there to where the boss, and better bodyguard, waited.

Nonetheless, this occurrence holds my attention.

Does it suggest my style of play?

Is it a testament to the effectiveness of colourful characters and how easy they are to empathize with?

Or does it imply that I carry around a certain level of general, unfocused guilt, guilt that helping out a figure that's just pixels and programming assuages?

DS down

Well, the hubris of not bringing my DS' charger has caught up with me.

After getting the "Chrysalis" and heading to Teddy Todo, the battery died. This wouldn't be a problem had I access to my charger, but we're currently in different locales.

Still, getting interrupted in the middle of play wasn't as frustrating as I expected it would be. My DS shut off, I swore, and that was that. It could be that already knowing where to go softened the blow of having to do it again.

Or, maybe because of Rosy Rupeeland's procedural nature I don't feel like there were any stunning feats I'll have to redo or chance encounters I'd have to re-wait for. It's a fun game, but everything coming down to rupees, and there being so many ways to get them, makes for a sort of play that, in retrospect, seems too orderly to be as fun as it is in the moment.

Crawling through the latest dungeon

The Insect Cavern is the most involved dungeon yet. Just like the Wind and Earth temples in The Wind Waker, its complexity comes from the events that take place within it.

The three mini-bosses are among these events, but the reappearance of Teddy Todo is the big one.

The bodyguard from the first dungeon, Todo's working for the pirates and scouting the dungeon for treasure. His appearances are mostly informative until the dungeon's end, when he asks for the "Chrysalis." This item alone is what makes the Insect Cavern a challenge.

You don't find the "Chrysalis" after any miniboss battle, nor are there any clues to its whereabouts. You just have to explore every inch of dungeon. Thankfully, it's in a chest and not just loose, but without a traditional Legend of Zelda compass, chests don't show up on your map. Needless to say, there's a fair bit of backtracking.

Though, working your way through the dungeon for a second time is a great chance to change bodyguards and get a rupee good you'd otherwise miss. It might be a pain, but at least the game's efficiently designed.