Noah's Ark

At a Glance: People often question their faith when confronted with issues of their own mortality, the reason for human existence, or where they put their car keys. Thankfully we can be reminded of Christianity and the Lord's work on every street corner, book shop, website, hotel, award show, caber tossing tournament, and every truck stop bathroom you go to. Oh, and video games by Konami.

Platform: NES (Download Emulator here - 192k)

Download: Download ROM here - 64k

Game Plot: Noah displays his compassion for all of God's creatures by gathering up two of each animal so that they may survive the coming flood. But as shown in this game, Noah doesn't give a fuck about crabs, snakes, snails, mice, scorpions, spiders, toads, ostriches, lobsters, penguins, owls, walruses, komodo dragons, manta rays, kangaroos, crocodiles, octopi, and crayfish. You will fight these animals all the way through this game. They are to be punished with arrows and bubbles.

The only reason why these sacrilegious animals may be alive today is obviously because Satan kept them alive. He probably built some kind of Anti-Ark which had badass rims, flame decals, and a bumper sticker that said, "F the Flood". They also sped by Noah in his ark, blasting water all over the top of the boat and calling all the other animals "sissies".

Anyway, as Noah, you set out to gather up two of every animal like the good little Christian you are. Before Christ was born. (Shh.) As I tried to do my heavenly work, to my horror, I watched these Native Americans / Indians / pissed off people beat the hell out of some skunks and imprison them. All that "mother nature" talk these Native Americans dish out doesn't seem to be holding true right now in this game. In fact, it seems as if all non-Christian societies have no compassion for God's creatures - the heathens wish to keep them in cages as the flood water rises instead of stuffing them in the only boat in the existence of the world. Not counting the stylish speedboat Noah gets to use at the end of each stage.

The Lord works in mysterious ways, and holy hell he gives you no clue what to do in this game. You shoot things which changed based on what ducks you collect. You are given no clue as to why the type of duck does what. Sometimes you pick up your more useful black bubble power and instantly get handed the much less useful arrow power for no reason at all. There are things in each stage that give you health and some other little things you can collect that give you other powers. But the only way to really divine what is going on in this game is to contact Satan or grow your very own Tree of Knowledge.

I hear it's called "Marijuana" these days.

Speaking of my dark lord there's some winged red guy who looks like your dad that you have to fight, but beyond that you don't see much demonic involvement. Just some really pissed off animals and ethnic groups. I guess this game was back when there weren't any demons. You had to go get yourself possessed by something else like syphilis or jumanji. Twenty miles away from where you live. Barefoot. In the snow.

Enemies: Not only do you combat Egyptians, ancient Aztecs,and some Native Americans, you also do battle with some sort of Greek/Roman soldier. This allows historians to correctly place the exact date of the flood at "what the fuck" BC. The full list of humanoid enemies is as follows:

• Romans
• Aborigines
• Egyptians
• Aztecs
• Native Americans
• Eskimos
• Asians

As you travel to each land you collect stereotypical symbols in order to replenish your lost health from being gang banged by Aztecs, alligators, and a severe brain disorder you just got from this game. The list of symbols include little ying-yangs that begin to appear when you reach Asia, a land entirely populated by karate kids that hurl throwing stars at you. It still surprises me when games made by the Japanese work so hard to make sure our stereotypes of asians are so strongly reinforced. I may not be an ambassador or anything, but shoving ying-yangs and guys in karate uniforms down our throats when you visit Asia might not be the best idea if you want to avoid those "all you guys know kee-ray-tay, right?" kind of moments.

Weapons: Various things that are given to you by ducks, or something. I have no real clue what they are. There is some kind of black ball thing, arrows that you shoot, and other things that you shoot that zigzag up and down. Why couldn't God have given you some of those flaming swords, burning bushes, or pillars of flame we've been hearing so much about? Powerups are given to you out of nowhere for no real reason, causing you to lose whatever useful power you just had gotten used to. No one said the road to salvation was paved with gold. Wait, I just did.

Also, for some reason, you can touch things and grow wings, turn into a fish, or turn into some kind of stone guy. The reason you can do this would require some kind of faith I imagine, and after this game I believe I was put on this world to suffer.

Hold on, I was raised Catholic. Never mind.

Levels: Seven. I watched that movie. Morgan Freeman was good in it.

Bosses: I seemed to have missed the part in the Bible where Noah transformed himself into a fish so he could defeat a giant piranha by throwing bubbles at it. These bosses are generally ridiculously hard, which is a nice topper to the "don't have a clue" feeling you get throughout the game. Each boss is either in the air or underwater, a fact that forces you to either use a little pair of wings or turn into some weird bearded fish. But most of these boss fights take place in the air and require you to slam the hell out of the jump button just to make sure you don't fall off the screen and die. It would seem I was meant to feel the pain that Noah went through by ruining my fingers keeping my fat holy ass aloft.

If a boss hits you once, you're practically dead. And whatever power up you have will go away instantly when you touch them. So naturally, these things want to touch you like never before. They bump, shimmy, jive, and do anything to get up next to you and touch some of that sweet Noah bootyfruit.

Each stage ends with some sort of drain plug monster on a chain, and each level ends with a giant boss creature you have to fight by means of a door that comes down on some clouds. [Stairway to Heaven joke removed: not funny.]

Defining Moment: Realizing that if this game is supposed to be a testament of God's love to mankind as shown in the rainbow, I'm surprised the Lord hasn't made some sort of SuperAIDs that has teeth and actually chews through our intestines while singing a showtune.

Each category in the rating system is based out of a possible -10 score (-10 being the worst). The overall score is based out of a possible -50 score (-50 being the worst).

– Kevin "The Goblin" Wilson