An Ode to the Tingle Bottle

This article was originally published on April 1st, 2022. We have decided to re-share it as part of Wind Waker Week.

“A communion of minds! Hearts beating as one!”
-Tingle, The Wind Waker HD

On November 7th, 2017, Miiverse, Nintendo’s social media platform on the Wii U and 3DS, was officially discontinued. This was a tragic date, indeed. The discontinuation not only closed the book on the service that brought us poorly worded questions about Metroid and cringey sagas of pre-teen heartbreak, but it killed one of the best and most unique features seen in the Zelda series within the past decade: The Tingle Bottle.

Introduced in The Wind Waker HD as a replacement for the Tingle Tuner, the Tingle Bottle allowed players, via Miiverse, to cast “letters” into the Great Sea that would later appear in the worlds of other players. And, in return, as one sailed the sea over the course of their adventure, they would find Tingle Bottles from others’ worlds floating amongst the waves. The letters contained within these bottles varied from simple text messages, to screenshots taken with the in-game Picto Box, to stunning pieces of hand-drawn artwork. Every bottle found was a surprise for its recipient, and every bottle sent out presumed a surprise for someone else.

More than just a quirky method of one-way communication, the Tingle Bottle had a sizable impact on The Wind Waker‘s core mechanics and features, both in terms of one’s single-player experience and of the larger community environment that it represented. Thanks to the Tingle Bottle, The Wind Waker, in its jump from standard to high definition, saw improvements to its moment-to-moment exploration, a revitalization of its progression systems, and a complete embrace of modern social gaming trends. The Tingle Bottle was a breath of fresh air for the Zelda series right before a certain breath of the wild re-wrote the formula completely.

But, for all the good it did, the Tingle Bottle and the fundamental design concepts it represented have not found a home in another Zelda title since The Wind Waker HD‘s release. Twilight Princess HD featured no comparable feature, and Breath of the Wild forged its own path with a completely different set of revolutionary ideas. Unfortunately, the Tingle Bottle remained unique to a single Wii U remaster, and then its functionality died with the discontinuation of the Miiverse.

So, as we celebrate all things Tingle today, I would like to reflect on and advocate for this special, one-of-a-kind item that bears his likeness. Listen well, fellow fairies, as I recite to you an ode to The Tingle Bottle.

 

Accessories Be Darned!

As mentioned above, the original version of The Wind Waker featured the Tingle Tuner, an optional item that took advantage of the connectivity between the GameCube and the Game Boy Advance. If a player connected their Game Boy Advance system to their GameCube with the Game Boy Advance-GameCube Link Cable, they (or a second player with the GBA in hand) could call Tingle for advice or information, gain a nifty sub-menu on the portable’s screen, and pay Rupees for a variety of assist actions. Additional bombs, temporary shields, potion drops, and more were all available through the Tingle Tuner… for a price.

However, while many players I’m sure found the tuner and its functions cool, charming, and helpful, the fact remains that its utility was limited to those who owned both a Game Boy Advance and the Link Cable. I — and many others on the Zelda Dungeon staff — was not lucky enough to own the latter as a child, meaning that an entire group of useful features was completely out of reach for me. The Tingle Tuner, despite being given an emphatic spotlight early in The Wind Waker‘s critical path, remained available only to a privileged few because it necessitated a separately sold accessory.

The Tingle Bottle on the other hand required no such accessory and was therefore usable for a larger portion of The Wind Waker‘s player base. Every player received the bottle upon their first visit to Windfall Island, and, as long as their console was connected to the Internet, they could make use of it right away. And that’s not to mention that players didn’t need to juggle additional cords or hardware to use the Tingle Bottle. The bottle’s entire functionality was easily within reach, right there on the TV and Wii U screens.

In removing the heavy burden of entry seen with the Tingle Tuner, the Tingle Bottle ensured that more players could enjoy all the features built into the Wind Waker experience. While the Tingle Tuner remains somewhat of a blind spot for a lot of Wind Waker players, the Tingle Bottle, as accessible as it was to all, had the opportunity to make an impression on nearly everyone who played The Wind Waker HD. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Tingle Bottle’s legacy outlives the Tingle Tuner for these very reasons.

 

Keeping Travelers Engaged

One common criticism about the original Wind Waker was that not enough was done to make sailing from one island to another exciting and engaging. Sure, enemies, submarines, lookouts, and the occasional Rupee to collect could stave off some boredom while one spent several minutes upon the waves; but those moments seemed few and far between, and they provided few incentives to muster up anything beyond mild distraction.

In The Wind Waker HD, however, the Tingle Bottles were highly effective in livening up travel across the Great Sea. Players committed to a long journey across the sea could expect to see a half-dozen Tingle Bottles or more along the way. That steady flow of shiny objects to collect, combined with the other oceanic distractions already present on the Great Sea, made traversal a much more active and engaging experience. Players so inclined to collect every bottle they could get their mitts on would habitually and earnestly scan the waves for the next glimmer of Tingle-shaped glass.

But what moved players to be so devoted to collecting Tingle Bottles? How could mere Miiverse messages be so exciting? Well, I would argue that Tingle Bottles — as vessels that could contain any random message, no matter how meaningful or mundane — capitalized on the part of human psychology that responds positively to the anticipation and recipience of surprise. Would the next bottle collected contain a funny Link selfie, a helpful hint for an upcoming quest, or an impressive work of art? The fact that you didn’t know was what encouraged you to keep picking them up. And that’s what encouraged you to stay alert while at sea, lest you miss out on the next important surprise.

Much like Kinder Eggs, capsule machines, or boxes of chocolate, Tingle Bottles and the surprises therein directly stimulated the reward pathways in our brains. For Wind Waker HD players, the bottles provided a continual stream of dopamine hits as bottles appeared along the horizons, as their inherent unpredictability enticed and incentivized players to experience their many surprises. Comparisons to loot boxes would be apropos; but these loot boxes prioritized fun over performance advantage and fun over profit.

With titles like Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, Nintendo has really emphasized the importance of “micro challenges” over the past few years. In an effort to keep players continually engaged and continually rewarded, the company’s sandbox and open-world offerings have been littered with tiny goals, puzzles, and collectibles, whether they be Korok Seeds, Moons, or Stamps. This design philosophy has its roots, at least partially, in the The Wind Waker HD‘s Tingle Bottles. Sure, collecting Tingle Bottles couldn’t expand one’s inventory or open up new areas; but collecting them did keep players actively engaged and actively rewarded all the same.

 

Setting, Not Following, the Trend

From a strictly gameplay perspective, the Zelda series — barring a few specific examples — has always been a very isolated experience. Every player conducted their adventure on their own, completely independent from the other thousands of players conducting the very same adventure at the same time. That’s rather standard for single-player video games, isn’t it? The online Zelda community we all participate in today very likely flourished because it was the only method by which players could interact and engage with each other, the only method by which players could share in a camaraderie not directly offered by the games themselves.

But with the introduction of the Tingle Bottles, one adventurer could be effortlessly connected with the larger community of adventurers, despite not having any direct interactions with those other adventurers. There is something psychologically fulfilling about being constantly reminded that you are part of a larger group of likeminded heroes who are participating in the same adventure you are and are striving toward the same goal as you are. And by taking full advantage of the Wii U’s internet connectivity and Miiverse framework, The Wind Waker HD offered that fulfillment in the form of magical glass jars meant to look like a thirty-five-year-old Fairy man.

Nintendo was very much ahead of the curve with this feature, actually.

In 2019, video game director Hideo Kojima coined the term “strand game” to describe his upcoming title Death Stranding. The idea was that, through Death Stranding‘s various gameplay systems, individual players could influence the worlds of other players and, in turn, feel the influence of other players in their world. The result was a persistent, if entirely indirect, connection between all Death Stranding players, as everyone contributed to a shared experience while also investing in their own traditional, individual experience. This entire dynamic turned out to be very effective.

Death Stranding‘s “strand” elements were not entirely new, as they more or less acted as a culmination of a decade of revolutionary gameplay ideas and experiments. Thatgamecompany’s Journey, Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma, Ubisoft’s ZombiU, and From Software’s Souls series all demonstrated how passive, transient cooperation and multiplayer could work in largely single-player games. Tingle Bottles, surprisingly, were just as essential in informing that gameplay trend, as they proved an effective testing ground for the connectivity features many modern games employ.

With The Wind Waker HD, Nintendo truly was on the cutting edge of video game design philosophy.

 

A Completionist’s Godsend

One of the most laborious side quests in the original Wind Waker was the Nintendo Gallery. To complete this quest, players had to take photographs of various characters / enemies in the game and then present those photos to Carlov of the Nintendo Gallery. Carlov would then carve Figurines based on the subjects of your photographs to fill out the gallery itself. The gallery would not have been complete until you presented Carlov a photo of every character and enemy (bosses included) in the entire game.

While completing the Nintendo Gallery during one’s first playthrough was certainly possible, it was more than likely that a player would have missed a photo or two before the credits rolled. Beyond the predictable challenges of tracking down every character and enemy in the game — some bosses could be missed, for example — the Nintendo Gallery hosted a set of unique (or needless, if you prefer) hurdles that made completion on a first playthrough that much more rare. For one, characters and bosses only encountered in cutscenes — such as Jabun, the Great Fairies, and the Sages — were dubbed “Legendary Pictographs” and could only be purchased from Windfall’s resident pictographer Lenzo. (You could only buy one Legendary Poctograph a day, by the way).

Additionally, and perhaps most crucially, the photos submitted to Carlov had to be in color in order to qualify for a Figurine. Therefore, progress on the Nintendo Gallery could only begin once the player secured the Deluxe Picto Box through an optional side quest. By the time the Deluxe Picto Box was in the hands of our hero, the player would have likely missed the opportunity to snapshot a boss or two, making the Nintendo Gallery a lost cause before it even started. Sure, progress on the Nintendo Gallery carries into New Game Plus; but, just speaking for myself, losing the opportunity to 100% a Zelda game was not what I’d call satisfying.

In addition to various quality-of-life improvements made to the Picto Box and the Nintendo Gallery itself in The Wind Waker HD, Tingle Bottles alleviated so, so many of the frustrations mentioned above. Beyond silly non-sequiturs and pieces of art, perhaps the most popular messages to come out of Tingle Bottles were photos for the Nintendo Gallery. Legendary Photos, boss snapshots, and other easily missable Pictographs were constantly circulating the Tingle Bottle network. And players who discovered in a bottle a photo that had not yet been submitted to Carlov could easily save that photo to their own Picto Box. So much hassle, including the hassle of having to play the game twice, was thus eliminated from the Nintendo Gallery.

And now that the Miiverse has been discontinued, that hassle is back again.

Through Tingle Bottles, many Wind Waker HD players devoted themselves to helping others complete the Nintendo Gallery side quest. As reported in the glory days of the game’s debut year, players actually established a form of “chainmail” made up of Nintendo Gallery photos. Messages that read, “For the Nintendo Gallery! Pass it on!” accompanied by a photo of Ghoma or Ganon, were quite common back then. These message chains proved a godsend for those frustrated by the original Nintendo Gallery; missing a photo or losing out on 100% completion was no longer such a concern.

Thanks to the Tingle Bottles and the community that formed around them, I was able complete to Nintendo Gallery for the first time in my life, and I’m sure many WWHD players can share in that sentiment.

But things go even deeper. Beyond just the tangible, personal advantages discussed above, the entire Nintendo Gallery chainmail phenomenon illustrated how the Zelda community could come together, unified, to not only complete a quest for themselves, but to help others complete that quest as well. That truly is a testament to the goodwill and generosity of the Zelda community itself. When presented the opportunity to help others with a difficult quest — with no promise of reward or recognition and with no control over a bottle’s destination — many players chose to do so, sincerely and enthusiastically. That really is a beautiful thought in light of the cynicism that permeates our day-to-day.

The Tingle Bottles invited a degree of selflessness, charity, and faith that I have not seen in a Zelda game before or since. If that’s not a strong enough reason to bring them back, I don’t know what is.

 

For the Lulz

On top of everything discussed so far — the accessibility, the community, the cooperation — the Tingle Bottles should be celebrated today because, more often than not, they were just really, really funny. Like the man-fairy they were meant to represent, the bottles frequently expressed a child-like sense of joy and an irreverent sense of humor.

The most witty and creative members of the Zelda community ensured that the Tingle Bottle ecosystem was abounding with jokes, memes, and selfies. And thus, players hoping for a pick-me-up during a long, isolated journey on the Great Sea needed only to snag a few bottles out of the water. Standout messages like, “townspeople butts part five,” wherein a brilliant hero snapped tasteful photos of NPCs’ posteriors, never failed to bring a smile to one’s face. And the Picto Box’s selfie feature was used to great effect to casually lampoon elements of The Wind Waker‘s world and characters. The Tingle Bottle was always there if you wanted to mock Link’s grandma or liken the game’s bomb shop owner to a character from Earthbound.

And we must not forget the scores of original artwork shared via the Tingle Bottle. During my first playthrough of The Wind Waker HD, I found myself frequently in awe of the sheer talent on display in Tingle Bottle art. Despite having such a crude canvas in Miiverse, artists of the highest caliber achieved jaw-dropping masterpieces and then scattered those pieces across the waves of the Great Sea. And many of those works of art carried a comedic edge as well. Beautiful hand-drawn artwork of Link burning in lava or Tingle striking a sexy pose were the types of amusements players could regularly expect from a Tingle Bottle.

 

For all the laughs brought to us by the Tingle Bottles during their hey-day, the big tragedy of it all is that not many of their messages were archived online. In collecting a few surviving goofs or drawings to highlight here in this article, I came to find out that there weren’t too many saved back then. I suppose that the Tingle Bottles, and the joy their silly messages produced, can only now exist in the memories of those who were lucky enough to see them.

 

Mourning What We Lost

Art by @Switch_Shannon

They say you can’t truly appreciate something until it’s gone.

I certainly feel that I didn’t comprehend the Tingle Bottle’s importance until I booted up The Wind Waker HD again this year. While the core Wind Waker experience thankfully remains intact, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something crucial was missing. The truth is that the Tingle Bottles — and everything the Zelda community put inside of them — were the secret sauce that made The Wind Waker HD such a positive experience for me.

Tingle Bottles improved the more frustrating aspects of The Wind Waker, they adopted modern gaming & technology advancements to great effect, and they demonstrated the ways in which a community can form even within a single-player game. For all that — and for all the chuckles — the Tingle Bottle deserves to be remembered as one of the finest ideas ever brought to the Zelda series.

The Tingle Bottle may just have been the best thing Tingle ever gave us.

Were you a fan of the Tingle Bottle in The Wind Waker HD? Do you have any fond memories relating to them? Do you have any favorite Tingle Bottle messages? Let us know in the comments below!

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