Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland

Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosey Rupeeland
European box art
Developer(s)	Vanpool
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Director(s)	Taro Kudo
Producer(s)	Kensuke Tanabe
Composer(s)	Masanori Adachi
Series	The Legend of Zelda
Platform(s)	Nintendo DS
Genre(s)	Adventure game
Mode(s)	Single-player

Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland (もぎたてチンクルのばら色ルッピーランド, Mogitate Chinkuru no Barairo Ruppīrando) is an adventure video game eveloped by Vanpool and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS handheld game console. It was first released in Japan, and was released in Europe on September 14, 2007, a year after its Japanese release.

Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland stars Tingle, a character who has appeared in several games in The Legend of Zelda series starting from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask for the Nintendo 64. It was commercially successful in Japan, selling 234,862 units by the end of 2007.

Gameplay

Screenshot of gameplay. The Nintendo DS's dual screens are often used to display a tall view of an area, combining the two screens to display one image.

The objective of Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland is to continually build up a tower found under a spring to the west of Tingle's house. To do this, the player must feed Rupees into the tower. Subsequent gameplay is built upon finding as much money as possible, but also mixed with traditional Zelda dungeon adventuring and puzzle elements. Among this, however, is a shallow bargaining system for interacting with NPCs, as items and information must be bought via offering what the player thinks is a suitable price. If the price is too low, the player may not receive anything, but if the price offered is too high they may be needlessly spending too much.

Dungeons

Dungeons within Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland are found on each of the game's three continents, and are a necessity to complete the game. By completing a dungeon, not only does the player receive what are typically the biggest Rupee rewards, but by defeating the end-of-dungeon bosses they also receive one of five gems. Even if the player has successfully built the tower to its tallest height, they must have collected all the gems to access the final location. Accessing these dungeons is limited by the height of the tower, as certain areas can only be accessed once the tower is a certain height, and thus after the player has donated enough Rupees into it.

Tingle can collect items along his journey, selling them later for profit or using them to aid support characters or other NPCs. Items can also be mixed together to create different variations. These are made via the boiling pot in Tingle's home, where the player uses the stylus to stir the mixture. Other items can be used to decorate the top floor of Tingle's house, and completing the game allows the player to change Tingle's clothing.

Whenever the player enters a new location within Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, the player will receive an incomplete map. By filling in and completing the map, via circling (with the stylus) points of interest which are not shown on it, the player can then show the map to an old woman in the nearby port town and receive a fixed sum of money. By selling the completed map, however, the player loses access to the map until they buy it back from the woman.

Combat

Although completing dungeons can be likened to that in The Legend of Zelda series, the combat is very different. Instead of having a large amount of direct input into the battles, within Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland the player simply engages an enemy, at which point both Tingle and the enemy character turn into a ball of dust as they fight. Then the player can either tap the screen to rally support for Tingle, or use the D-pad (A, B, Y and X for Left-handed people) to move the fight around the screen.

Although Tingle's Rupee count depletes as he fights with an enemy, successfully defeating one results in receiving Rupees and rare items. By engaging multiple enemies in battles by moving the dust cloud over them, the amount of rewards multiply, though Tingle loses more Rupees early on in the battle.

Furthermore, to assist Tingle in battles, the player can acquire bodyguards as support characters to help him in combat and dungeons. Bodyguards are found in "Bodyguard Salons", there are thirty of these characters in all, and they must be bargained with for them to help. These characters come in small, medium and large sizes, reflecting their combat abilities.

Plot

Story

The plot of Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland follows Tingle's transformation from a rather ordinary middle-aged man into his green-clothed fairy persona. The story starts when one day a voice calls Tingle from his home to a spring west of his house. There, Uncle Rupee, an old man with a Rupee-shaped head, appears and offers Tingle a life in a paradise called Rupeeland if he continues to feed Rupees to the Western Pool. If enough Rupees are fed, the tower found under the pool will grow upwards towards the sky, and Tingle will be able to enter Rupeeland. Tingle accepts the offer and Uncle Rupee transforms him into a giant yellow rupee so that Rupees become his source of life. However, near the end of the game, the player learns that Uncle Rupee has been deceiving Tingle all along, causing Tingle to battle against him.

Setting

Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland features three continents divided into eleven islands. Each island is themed differently and sometimes contains its own dungeon or else it has a central puzzle the player must complete.

Development

Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland was announced in October 2005 under the title Tingle RPG. It was later released on September 2, 2006 in Japan, and in Europe on September 14, 2007.

Reception

Reception

Aggregate score

Aggregator	Score
GameRankings	66.25% (16 reviews)

Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland has received mostly positive reviews from the few outlets which have reviewed it. Official Nintendo Magazine gave the game a score of 76%, praising the game's uniqueness, humour and "fantastically stylised graphics", but criticizing it for dull dungeon design and a poor battle system. Nintendo Life praised the game as well, noting the boss battles in particular to be surprising and exciting, though they noted that the game "can start to wear after a while," as some aspects were "repetitive and/or annoying." Furthermore, Nintendo Life commended Nintendo of Europe for showing the courage to localize the game into English.

In its first week of release, it sold more than 45,000 units in Japan. It was the 57th best-selling game of 2006 in Japan, selling 207,525 units. It was the 478th best-selling game of 2007, selling 21,295 units in that year for a total of 234,862 units as of 2007. IGN ranked the cover art the scariest cover art in gaming.

International release

Following several articles and import reviews in various international monthly publications, like Electronic Gaming Monthly and Nintendo Power, the British Official Nintendo Magazine reviewed the game under the name of Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland in its March 2007 issue, stating a release of the game that month. In early January 2007, website Cubed³ reported that Nintendo had confirmed to them a European release for 2007, but it was not until June 21, 2007, that Nintendo officially announced that the game would be released in European countries under the same title used by Official Nintendo Magazine.

Legacy

Super Smash Bros. Brawl includes stickers based on artwork from the game, and the game itself is referenced in Tingle's trophy description. However, the game is referred to as "Tingle's Rupeeland".

A sequel was also released for the Nintendo DS titled Irozuki Tincle no Koi no Balloon Trip. Unlike the first game, this game was released only in Japan.

External links

• Official website