The two games that came out in-between these, Tingle’s Balloon Fight DS and Too Much Tingle Pack, were much smaller but no less strange. The latter was a remix of the famous NES game offered to Japanese gamers as a Nintendo Club exclusive while the latter was downloadable through the DS’s DSiWare program. As a result, only one of the Tingle games was ever translated into English and even then it was only released in Europe. For most Americans than, the localized translation for Ripened Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love is a landmark event in the world of Tingle-fandom.

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When asked what Tingle’s deal was a few years back, long-time producer on the Zelda series, Eiji Aonuma, told Kotaku the character was envisioned as being a more realistic sort of Peter Pan. “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,” Aonuma said. “And so I think, to that extent the clothes do fit this image of him.” Since Tingle did grow up, because that’s what people do, he’s now in his 30s and looking for romance, at least in Ripened Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love, a game you could conceivably now understand although ultimately probably still won’t.