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Welcome to my (GhostDEFENDER’s) little review. To start, what we have here is something a bit different. It’s not every day that we have a Zelda spin-off as unique as Color Changing Tingle’s Love Balloon Trip (TLBT). In case you were wondering, this game has several translated titles. Apart from Color Changing Tingle’s Love Balloon Trip, we also have

• Color Changing Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love
• Ripening Tingle’s Love Balloon Trip
• Ripening Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love
• Irodzuki Tincle no Koi no Balloon Trip
• Irozuki Tingle no Koi no Balloon Trip
• Tingle’s Love Balloon Trip
• Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love

The list goes on; you’d be surprised at the number of titles I’ve seen floating around for the same game. Also, don’t forget the abbreviations (i.e. TLBT, CCTBToL). It’s worth pointing out that it has recently blown towards “Color Changing Tingle’s Love Balloon Trip” and “Irodzuki Tincle No Koi No Balloon Trip” due to cooperation from leading websites on the game, such as GameFAQs.com, GameSpot.com, NDSGame.info, and ZeldaInMyPocket.com.

When the past installment in the Tingle series, Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland, was released, it received an excellent welcome wagon in Japan (no sarcasm), as well as in America (sarcasm). Whether gamers were fans of Tingle or not, most who played the game actually enjoyed it, and many have said it is one of their favorite games in the Zelda series.

Will the sequel live up to its predecessor’s glory? Read on, my friends, read on.

As I loaded up the game, I was (pleasantly) surprised to see that several new characters had been added to the series. I watched the opening cutscene, and saw that it was good. (No pun intended.) However, when it came time for me to navigate around my room, I was a bit confused. “Why isn’t this stupid control pad working?!”, I asked myself. Within the next few moments, I realized that this was a point-and-click adventure game.

For those of you who remember, Lucasarts had quite a few of these games way back when. (These included the infamous Monkey Island games, which have recently made their way to WiiWare.)

At first I was dismayed to come to this realization. I loved Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland. I wanted another Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland. I don’t want this crappy point-and-click game! …But after playing for about half-an-hour, I began to change my mind. I noticed how vivid the colors were, and how well-developed the character’s personalities were (surprising, seeing as I couldn’t even read the dialog; the expressions from the small sprites conveyed everything that I needed to know). The game had a cheerful atmosphere to go along with it, too. The music was also great; it seemed to mix a little bit of the old in with some new. I started to thoroughly enjoy myself.

Then, it happened- I got stuck. After trying almost every possible avenue I saw, I had nowhere left to turn. And I was only on Page Two. You see, this game is divided up into pages. Each page has several sections (usually about three, but sometimes up to five) that Tingle must venture through to complete the page.

Eventually, I figured out what to do after messing around using various items for an hour or so. For this particular style of point-and-click adventure, you search for items, use them on other items, and use the effects in different areas. For example, you might search through a pile of corn husks, and find an ear of corn. You take inside a farmer’s hut, and use it on the fire to roast it. You can then take the cooked corn and give it over to a statue.

Or in a another instance, you can use a slingshot to strike a crow, causing it to drop a much-needed battery. There are so many items, and so many objects, it’s hard to know what to interact with, and how.

From what I’ve seen so far, this is a very rewarding game; it has plenty of challenges, to be sure, but isn’t that what Nintendo fans have been asking for, especially when it comes to Zelda? Of course, it’s debatable as to whether this is actually a “Zelda” game, per say. Personally, I take the stance of it “not” being a Zelda game within itself, but more of being a part of Zelda.

For those of you interested in purchasing this game, I would suggest that you wait for an English release, as this is a very text-heavy game. Well into the game, very difficult puzzles will await you, many of them which are almost impossible to complete without some understanding of the language. However, it undeniably makes the game a ‘quite’ bit harder, so if you’re looking for a real challenge, go ahead and give it a spin!

Let’s just hope that this humor-filled game comes to America soon, as it’s something you don’t want to miss out on.

Note: This review was generously donated to Zelda in my Pocket by GhostDEFENDER. The only other place this review can be found is on GameSpot.com, which hosts an older version.