Tingle.
Just the sound of that name can make the most casual Zelda fan shudder.
Whether you love him, hate him, or love to hate him, Tingle has definitely left his mark in the storied world that is The Legend of Zelda.
Appearing in a few Zelda titles and even getting his own (Freshly Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland for the Nintendo DS), Tingle has served quite often as the fool in many adventures.
Though he serves a useful purpose as a cartographer in most of the games in which he appears, many fans become uneasy when he’s around.
It’s only fitting that now we get a little insight about the character with the release of Majora’s Mask 3D and the addition of Tingle to Hyrule Warriors in the Majora’s Mask DLC.
Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma had this to say:
“I guess the heart of the character there is a little bit of a gag kind of feeling to it. The way the design of the character started is that we needed to think about how the character—the player—would get access to maps in this game. Of course, you could go with a situation where, as soon as he sees an area, you just open up your map and it fills in for you, but we wanted to do something a little bit different.
So, we thought, what if you had to buy maps? Then suddenly we needed a character that you would be buying maps from. We ultimately ended up with a character here that had a little bit of humor to him that [came from] thinking of…’What sort of person would sell a map?’ And, well, we decided it would be the kind of person who makes a map. And the way that he makes a map is by floating through the air so that he can see the contours of the land and draw them. But as soon as we got that far in the process, we realized anybody that would fly through the air making a map has got to be a really weird
So when we made the character, we had this notion that one of the ways he might be a little bit weird is that he had this notion that he never wanted to grow up. And so I think, to that extent the clothes do fit this image of him. And the whole thing comes together as a very Peter Pan kind of visual. You know, if you think about it, it’s this guy in his 30s in a green suit and is flying and never wants to grow up, it all sort of comes together around that.”
The question regarding Tingle’s orientation was also posed to Aonuma.
“He’s not gay. He’s just an odd person.”
Though he’s not the first male character in the Zelda franchise where fans have questioned that. Don’t forget about these two dudes:
Does this change your perspective of Tingle or do you still find him as creepy as before? Tell us what you think in the comment section below.
Tingle, Tingle! Kooloo-Limpah!
