Tingle Was Supposed to Star in a Horror Game, Apparently

If you were to ask any Nintendo fan who their favorite Legend of Zelda character is, you’d probably get a smattering of responses ranging from the titular Zelda, ol’ pot-smashing Link himself, dad-sexy Ganon, Midna, any number of Zoras, the Skull kid, the happy mask salesman… heck, there’s probably a surprisingly large fanbase around Linkle. Very few people, however, would probably say Tingle, the middle-aged midget in a onesie who claims to be a fairy, rides around in a giant balloon, and is obsessed with both making maps and making money. He’s kind of like the Waluigi of the Zelda universe.

But unlike Waluigi, Tingle has actually starred in his own games: Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, which was released exclusively in Europe and Japan, and Irodzuki Tingle no Koi no Balloon Trip, which was a Japanese exclusive. Both games were met with an ambivalent shrug by the gaming public, and are probably best to ignore these days because of some truly tasteless homophobic humor. But according to the Nintendo producer Kensuke Tanabe, the developer behind those two games, Vanpool, was actually working on a THIRD Tingle-focused game.

Which, he told Kotaku, would have been a horror title.

I’m having a hard time imagining what that might look like except some kind of horrible dating sim where your only options were Tingle in different outfits, and Tanabe was more than happy to leave us guessing as to what it might have been.

“Looking back eight years ago, we were developing a horror game with Vanpool that starred Tingle as the main character. but that project was canceled due to a variety of reasons.”

I don’t think it’s super hard to guess what might have lead to the cancellation, there. Regardless, Vanpool has been busy on other projects, and was in fact the studio responsible for the underrated Dillon’s Dead-Heat Breakers, which he was there to promote.

Which is cool and all, but… I’m sorry, I can’t stop thinking about that horror game.