Wisdom Tree’s Plug and Play: The Arkade

At some point during university, I happened to stumble upon the Angry Video Game Nerd’s episode 17: Bible Adventures.  Having been raised Catholic, the games being reviewed were more intriguing to me than they might have been to others because I was familiar with some of the biblical figures being portrayed and their stories.  The hilariousness of how far removed some of the gameplay was from the actual bible had me laughing so hard that I had tears pouring down my face the entire time I watched James Rolfe’s rage-fest unfold before my eyes.  My love for the AVGN was born in that very moment.  Since then, I watch that episode on a fairly regular basis, especially if I’m having a bad day.

Wisdom Tree is the developer and publisher of these Biblical-themed games featured in the AVGN episode.  For those unfamiliar with them, all the games they developed were not Nintendo official.  In fact, their cartridges required some nefarious finagling to override the lockout chip in each Nintendo system they produced games for (talk about good Christian values.)   Now, as if to ride out the positive uproar over Nintendo’s NES Classic Mini coming out in the fall, they’ve decided to release their own plug and play unit called “The Arkade” that will feature all of their previously released games.  They are looking for support through a Kickstarter route.

Their games are pretty awful.  I own the Bible Adventures cartridge for NES that features 3 individual games of biblical proportions, and they are some of the most poorly programmed games I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing.  With that said though, there’s an element of It’s So Bad It’s Good in there that keeps me coming back to play it once in a while.  Especially Baby Moses.  There’s something so satisfying in beating a game that’s so broken.

Despite the history with this company and the poor quality of their games, I will probably support their kickstarter for a few reasons.  The first is that I don’t currently own any of the other games they released and would like to.  One of them is a Zelda clone, and I love Zelda clones!  Secondly, because these games have been popularized through various routes like the AVGN episode, their prices have gotten to be pretty inflated.  I don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on awful games.  I’d rather spend my beans on something I know I will love, and I don’t know if I will ever be able to use the word “love” to describe how I feel about Bible Adventures.  Thirdly, with some of the pledge levels, you can get multicart compilations of all the games for the original consoles that the games were originally released for: Sega Genesis and NES.  They’re also offering up copies of Super Noah’s Ark 3D, which is a re-skin of Wolfenstein 3D (yes, you read that correctly.)  That aspect is what is tickling my fancy the most.  I love cartridges and playing on my original hardware.  As nice as a plug and play would be, I’d much prefer a cartridge that’ll output the way I want it to rather than being stuck with potentially low quality output from a plug and play unit.

If anyone else is interested in the project, here’s a link.

I’m hoping to post an update on some acquisitions in a little while.  We have been so busy fighting the good fight against our renovation projects that I’ve been too preoccupied to do much thrifting or post when we have found stuff.  Come back soon.

Hope you’re all enjoying your day so far.  Thanks for reading!

-GG