Will Tingle take on America? Still available only in Europe and Japan, the gayest video game ever has yet to hit our shores

IN THE WORLD OF VIDEO GAMES, things don't get much gayer than Nintendo's Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland. After all, the titular Tingle is 35, single, infatuated with fairies, and never without his trademark green tights and red Speedo. All of which explains, perhaps, why American garners have given the character the cold shoulder since he first appeared in an offshoot of The Legend of Zelda series back in 2000, and why Tingle's first solo outing has yet to see the light of day in the United States.

The game--released in Japan late last year and throughout Europe in September--has our hero solving puzzles, bartering with characters, and fighting villains (with the help of bodyguards). The game's style is old-school Zelda, but there's no princess to save; Tingle's objective is to make money (hence the reference to rupees in the title).

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Tingle is among the most hated video game characters in America--IGN.com's "Die, Tingle, Die! Die!" campaign from 2004 is indicative of how most gamers in this country feel about the otherworldly oddball--but he's not without supporters. Flynn De Marco, better known as "Fruit Brute" at GayGamer.net, a site the Atlanta-based graphic designer started in 2006, launched an online petition to bring Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland to the States shortly after it was released in Japan. It has since amassed more than 1,000 signatures.

"When I first heard about [the game], I just about wet my pants," says GayGamer associate editor David Edison. "Just the fact that something called Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland exists is reason enough to want to play it."

Visitors to GayGamer.net, which playfully bills itself as being for "boys who like boys who like joysticks," seem to agree. One gamer, going by the wholesome handle "peteypuke," recently declared that the game is "gayer than a giant pineapple drink with paper umbrellas. Tingle rules."

But if all that support doesn't sway Nintendo of America to release the game on our shores, Edison says he'll understand: "Tingle doesn't exactly have 'generous financial return' written on his hooded pastel jumpsuit."

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