Jar Jar Binks was supposed to be the role of a lifetime for actor Ahmed Best, plucked from a percussive dance troupe and given serious screen time in George Lucas' "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace," released in 1999. The negative response led him to contemplate take his own life.
On Wednesday, Takaya Imamura reported in for his last day of work with Nintendo. In his 32 years with the company, he worked on some of the publisher s biggest franchises. While he spent many years working with F-Zero and Star Fox and designing some of their best characters, one of his biggest contributions to gaming history came from designing Tingle, the oddball supporting character who first debuted in The Legend of Zelda: Majora s Mask.
With the announcement of Imamura s departure, my thoughts turned to arguably his greatest creation. But Tingle wasn t always considered to be that. I remember when he was first introduced to the gaming world in the pages of Nintendo Power magazine back in 2000. I believe the words nightmare fuel were used to describe him years before that became common vernacular. I m getting ahead of myself, though. Let s take a look back at Tingle, Nintendo s wackiest mascot this side of Waluigi, and his place in Nintendo s grander universe.