Edit 01/30/25: Tingle Balloon Fight truly was a published DS game, but it was only available as a Club Nintendo Japan reward for members! The article is now edited to reflect the same.
“Tingle-Tingle, Kooloo-LIMPAH! Become… A balloon?” Believe it or not, this variation of the famous phrase from our favorite middle-aged fairy could have become canon. Yesterday, Majora’s Mask developer and the creator of Tingle Takaya Imamura had publicly revealed a piece of juicy information about the Terminian map maker. He once made a parody Balloon Fight game for the Nintendo DS that featured Tingle. His quoted repost comment was apparently inspired by Nintendo staff Hirokazu “Chip” Tenaka reminiscing on Famitsu Magazine’s X post honoring the 40th anniversary of the NES game Balloon Fight.
“What do you think? Well, at the time, I never thought that this software would be in the news 40 years later,” said Tenaka in a rough English translation. “The only thing I remember clearly is the second day of the meeting with the late Iwata-san, and he showed me a balloon trip at the hotel where we were staying, saying, ‘this is what I made.'” Imamura added, “Speaking of which, Tanaka was also in charge of the music for Balloon Fight! At the time, we were in different departments, so I didn’t have a chance to work with him, but he did take me out to play a few times!”
The two developers continued to swap fond memories about the game in a lengthy quote thread that lead to Imamura making the great confession. “About 20 years later, I made Balloon Fight with Tingle. There were quite a few parodies of our own products, such as WarioWare and Tanaka’s pocket camera.” In case you ever doubted him, Imamura revealed a photo of cover art for the parody game that Nintendo cleverly kept quiet about. The art features a hilarious scrapbook style of Tingle taped over the Balloon Fight man. He’s floating with balloons trying to avoid being eaten by an aggressive cartoon fish over the ocean.
It’s hard to say whether the game would have sold well or not. The inside joke game actually did get published for the DS, it was only available to Club Nintendo Japan members. But for all Tingle-loving fans out there, it’s at least comforting to know that the daring fairy was famous enough to have his very own crossover.
