''Super 3D Noah's Ark'' is a Christian video game 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, and was ported a year later to

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, and re-released in 2015 on Steam for Microsoft Windows,

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

, 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, w ...

. 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 ''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 Wolfenst ...

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 Wolfe ...

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

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soldiers in a castle, the player takes the part of Noah, 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 A slingshot is a small hand-powered projectile weapon. The classic form consists of a Y-shaped frame, with two natural rubber strips or tubes attached to the upper two ends. The other ends of the strips lead back to a pocket that holds the proj ...

, 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, 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, ''

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'' 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 Super Nintendo Entertainment System, 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

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

References

External links