''Super 3D Noah's Ark'' is a

Christian video game A Christian video game is an aspect of Christian media for video games, this video game genre focuses on the narrative and themes of Christian morals and Christianity. The term can also refer to Christian symbolism, mythology, media franch ...

developed by

Wisdom Tree Wisdom Tree, Inc. is an American developer of Christian video games. Originally founded in 1988 as Color Dreams, one of the first companies to work around Nintendo's lockout chip technology for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the company cha ...

for the

Super Nintendo Entertainment System The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a Fourth generation of video game consoles, 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South ...

, and was ported a year later to

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, and re-released in 2015 on

Steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporizat ...

for Microsoft Windows,

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, and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

. The game was an officially licensed

id Software id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: game programmer, programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer T ...

Wolfenstein 3D engine title, but was not licensed by Nintendo, so it was sold in Christian bookstores instead of typical video game retailers.

Gameplay

The game plays similarly to ''

Wolfenstein 3D ''Wolfenstein 3D'' is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen. Originally released on May 5, 1992, for DOS, it was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game ''Castle Wolfen ...

'', but the graphics were changed to reflect a non-violent theme. Instead of killing

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hit ...

soldiers in a castle, the player takes the part of

Noah Noah ''Nukh''; am, ኖህ, ''Noḥ''; ar, نُوح '; grc, Νῶε ''Nôe'' () is the tenth and last of the pre-Flood patriarchs in the traditions of Abrahamic religions. His story appears in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Genesis, chapters 5� ...

, wandering the Ark, using a slingshot to shoot sleep-inducing food at angry attacking animals, mostly goats, in order to render them unconscious. The animals behave differently: goats, the most common enemy, will only kick Noah, while the other animals such as sheep, ostriches, antelopes and oxen will shoot spittle at him from a distance. Goats are also unable to open doors, while the other animals can. The gameplay is aimed at younger children. ''Noah's Ark'' includes secret passages, food, weapons and extra lives. There are secret levels, and shortcut levels as well. The player eventually comes across larger and more powerful slingshots, and flings coconuts and watermelon at the larger boss-like animals, such as Ernie the Elephant and Carl the Camel.

History

Development

The game that would eventually become ''Super 3D Noah's Ark'' was originally conceived as a licensed game based on the movie ''

Hellraiser ''Hellraiser'' is a 1987 British supernatural horror film written and directed by Clive Barker, and produced by Christopher Figg, based on Barker's 1986 novella ''The Hellbound Heart''. The film marked Barker's directorial debut. Its plot invol ...

'', a movie that Wisdom Tree founder Dan Lawton was a great fan of. Wisdom Tree acquired the game rights to ''Hellraiser'' for $50,000, along with a license to use the ''Wolfenstein 3D'' game engine from id Software, believing that the fast, violent action of ''Wolfenstein'' would be a good match for the mood of the film. Development initially began on the

Nintendo Entertainment System The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in American ...

, with Wisdom Tree intending to ship the game on a special cartridge that came equipped with a co-processor that could increase the system's RAM and processing speed several times over. Eventually the ''Hellraiser'' game concept was abandoned due to several issues: the hardware of the NES was found unsuitable because of its low color palette and the addition of a co-processor would have made the cartridge far too expensive for consumers. According to Vance Kozik of Wisdom Tree, little progress was made on the NES incarnation of the game, which he described as "a barely up-and-running demo". The platform for ''Hellraiser'' was then switched to the PC, and the developers were able to make more progress on this version. However, by the time the first prototype was finished, '' Doom'' had been released, and Wisdom Tree felt that ''Hellraiser'' would not be able to compete. In addition, the management at Wisdom Tree decided that developing and publishing a horror-themed game would clash with their religious, family-friendly image. With these factors in mind, Wisdom Tree decided to let their ''Hellraiser'' license expire, transfer development to the

, and redesign the game with a Christian theme, eventually coming up with a game about Noah's Ark. As the game was not officially sanctioned by Nintendo, Wisdom Tree devised a pass-through system similar to the Game Genie to bypass the system's copy protection, where the player had to insert an officially licensed SNES game into the cartridge slot on top of the ''Super 3D Noah's Ark'' cartridge. A popular rumor claims that id Software licensed the ''Wolfenstein 3D'' engine to Wisdom Tree in retaliation against Nintendo for the content restrictions Nintendo placed on the Super NES version of ''Wolfenstein 3D''. In actuality, Wisdom Tree offered id Software very lucrative terms for the ''Wolfenstein 3D'' game engine, which id regarded as having already outlived its usefulness, and id staff have stated that they never had any problems with Nintendo in the first place.

Re-release

In January 2014, the game was re-released for the SNES, initially available only by private email orders, but later through Piko Interactive's website. The game was also updated for the 20th Anniversary Edition and released on

itch.io Itch.io (stylized as itch.io) is a website for users to host, sell and download indie games. Launched in March 2013 by Leaf Corcoran, the service hosts over 500,000 games and items (assets, ebooks, music) . Itch.io also allows users to host ...

on May 26 the same year for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. These modern PC re-releases are based on the ECWolf

game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term " software engine" used in the softwar ...

, a derivative of Wolfenstein 3D and ZDoom.ecwolf
on maniacsvault.net

References

External links