Rupees are a Farce: An Essay on Bogus Video Game Economies

The Legend of Zelda has a tight reinforcement loop. Even a moderate level of exploration will lead to a treasure chest, which is opened alongside a satisfying chime and Link looking like he just discovered a cure for the common cold. It is all fun and games until it turns out the item in the chest is just a damn rupee.

Let’s start with the basics. In The Legend of Zelda, you can spend rupees for meaningful items like shields, swords, tunics and other upgrades. It isn’t uncommon for the franchise to lock some of its most valuable tools behind rupee paywalls, and before we get to how shitty that is, I do want to say one thing: I respect the hustle of the various shopkeepers spread throughout Hyrule. I don’t know what they do with those rupees when Link pays them, but I’m sure there is some underground brothel or a movie theater in an undisclosed area somewhere that Nintendo hasn’t dared show us. (Seriously, think of what kind of weird propaganda movies Ganon has developed. The shopkeepers must eat them up with all the rupees Link gives them.) We can imagine some pre-Link Hyrule where all of these old shopkeepers looted all these chests and replaced them with rupees as some cruel joke, knowing Link probably had a full wallet anyway and wouldn’t be able to carry it with him.

That’s the worst part of this farcical economy in Hyrule: there’s some weird wallet cap that prevents hard-working people like Link or that weird Deku kid from Majora’s Mask from developing a portfolio. No matter how many rupees they find, they can never get rich. When you think about it, it’s bullshit. We have all been playing Ocarina of Time and had a max of 99 rupees only to find a store that sells some cool party mask for 200 rupees. Can you imagine if you wanted a BMW and had a full wallet and that still wasn’t enough to buy the car?

So now Link has to upgrade his wallet. Guess what he has to do if he wants to do that? He has to go to someone named the “Cursed Rich Man,” who looks like a twelve-year old’s first draft of a Spider-Man drawing – one you wouldn’t even be bothered to hang on the fridge out of pity.. The Cursed Rich Man, the only one who can give Link the upgrade he wants – nay, needs – most clearly represents big money banks. Or not. (It would be really helpful if Nintendo would make their allegories clearer.) Either way, Link has to put up with this guy’s bullshit because, in order to partake in this stupid economy, he needs a bigger wallet. And right around the time Link gets his bigger wallet, the rupees he finds in chests continue to increase in size. You know what that means? The wallet just fills up that much faster. You can bet bottom dollar that Cursed Rich Man will be waiting for you to get that next wallet upgrade. And all for what? Just so Link can afford the latest tech in Hyrule? Link is saving the entire world every single game; have a little respect, shopkeeps. He deserves those tools for free.

Furthermore, who else is buying these tools? I sure as hell don’t see anyone else roaming around Hyrule, chucking bombs at weird looking birds and questionably placed boulders. This develops a further question: does Link sustain this economy all on his own? I, for one, have never seen Link wait in any lines. Shouldn’t some of these stores being going out of business, or is the economy in such a state that a mere one purchase from Link is enough for these shopkeepers to provide food for their families and weird dogs that run around in circles, surely hopped up on some kind of “magic bean.”

This  horrible economy isn’t a concept developed by The Legend of Zelda either. In fact, the Mario franchise is somehow worse: there are coins scattered all over the world, and for what? So Mario can live one extra life? Usually the pursuit of these coins leads to some sort of horrific death anyway, like stepping into the mouth of a piranha plant or falling into a deep void with no bottom. Much like in real life, it’s the pursuit of wealth that is the death of us. Perhaps this is a deeply woven critique of capitalism from Nintendo. It seems more likely their fictional economies are just bullshit. It’s time to replace rupees with something that actually matters: like cool new shoes for us to wear when we get bored of Link’s boots, or a scroll with a funny joke on it. We, the gamers, have had enough of your bogus video game economies.

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