Saturday, June 18, 2016

Link's Wild Rupeeland

This post will anger some fans and amuse others. But during the presentations of Breath of the Wild I kept wondering, why the small "Get Item" sound, whenever you pick something up from the ground, felt so strangely familiar. I kept thinking about other games that I played with lots of loot and then it struck me: Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland! In this game you freshly pick up tons of junk and every time it makes this two-note sound effect, which is very similar to the one in Breath of the Wild, only higher pitched. And there are quite some similarities between the two games.

The loot is just one example. You collect food, minerals and other things from the environment, as well as body parts and weapons from enemies. There are over 140 different items in the game to collect...


Some items act as keys for dungeons or are wanted by certain people, but the majority you either use for cooking or to sell them, very similar to Breath of the Wild. In Link's new game it seems like you won't find Rupees in the wilderness, but you can sell treasures to get Hyrule's currency. So, this part has seemingly become a little bit more realistic, much as the health situation.

Hopefully every consumable item is replenishable in some way. You should be able to buy all weapons and ammunition or otherwise you might run out of Fire Rods during the course of the game, which wouldn't be much fun. Like in Skyward Sword every treasure item should be farmable in some way, including the minerals. In Freshly Picked: Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland certain resources like plants, mushrooms and vegetables regrew after a while and I suppose it will be similar in Breath of the Wild.

And for example the Talus guy gave you minerals after you defeated him, where it would be possible that he respawns after a while. At first you will find plenty of minerals within the environment, but that's a finite resource, where some other way of getting would be required later in the game, if you still need more.

Anyway, besides the loot, another thing that reminded me of Rupeeland was the fact that you glide down to new areas. In Rupeeland you use Tingle's balloon from a high tower to reach new areas as well. The higher the tower gets, the further you can go on the overworld.

And there's no music on the overworld, it's all just ambient sounds, where the game has a very nice atmosphere. I suppose, this also reminded me of the game, when I saw Breath of the Wild this week. There's still music Rupeeland, where one of the most memorable and atmospheric tracks is the Deku Temple music. But you also have music inside the town or when you fight enemies.

Now, this made me want to replay Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland and I might do that later this year, as part of my 30th Anniversary Replay Tour.

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