Games
Wisdom Tree's titles always had a Christian theme to them, and were often sold in Christian bookstores and the like. Most games attempted to use the medium to tell Bible stories in such a way as to make them interesting to children of the video game era. Interestingly, many of their games were partial conversions of titles previously released by Color Dreams, with appropriate changes in theme. A Wisdom Tree product catalog shows screenshots from Joshua & The Battle of Jericho displaying a side-scrolling game using the Bible Adventures engine. The actual released game used the Crystal Mines/Exodus engine.
The company's first release as Wisdom Tree was Bible Adventures, a three-in-one multicart which borrowed many gameplay elements found in the American Super Mario Bros. 2, applied to three different Bible stories: Noah collecting animals for the Ark, saving Baby Moses from Pharaoh's men, and re-enacting the story of David and Goliath. The game sold 350,000 copies, encouraging the company to continue pursuing this path of making games.
Other Wisdom Tree games included Exodus (a conversion of Color Dreams's old Crystal Mines game, with the story of the Israelites' 40-year desert trek grafted onto it), King of Kings (similar to Bible Adventures, but now featuring three events in the early life of Jesus Christ) and Bible Buffet (a "video board game" with Bible quizzes). They also released Spiritual Warfare, an action-adventure title similar in style to The Legend of Zelda, albeit with the requisite religious theme (the player, as a foot soldier in the Lord's army, is tasked with saving the souls of the heathen populace, using fruit of the spirit). The company also released ports of some of these games to the Sega Genesis and Game Boy, as well as Bible-reading programs (both King James and NIV versions) for Game Boy. Their Sunday Funday, a 1995 conversion of the Color Dreams game Menace Beach, is one of the last commercial NES releases in the United States.
Wisdom Tree holds the distinction of having made the only unlicensed game ever commercially released for the American Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Super 3D Noah's Ark. This conversion of the Wolfenstein 3D engine featured the player as Noah, attempting to quell upset animals on the Ark by flinging sleep-inducing fruit at them. Its shape (the only American SNES cartridge to not use the standard Nintendo-manufactured shell) resembles that of the SNES Game Genie or Sonic & Knuckles on the Sega Genesis, with a pass-through cartridge port at the top; the game requires an "official" Nintendo-licensed cartridge plugged into this pass-through, which allows the game to bypass the SNES's lockout protection and boot up.
The Wisdom Tree game King of Kings was listed as the honorable mention in Gamespy.com's "Seven Christmas Games That Make You Hate Christmas", due to its unentertaining gameplay and the farcical feel of dodging "acid-spitting camels".
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Famous quotes containing the word games:
“Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“In 1600 the specialization of games and pastimes did not extend beyond infancy; after the age of three or four it decreased and disappeared. From then on the child played the same games as the adult, either with other children or with adults. . . . Conversely, adults used to play games which today only children play.”
—Philippe Ariés (20th century)
“As long as lightly all their livelong sessions,
Like a yardful of schoolboys out at recess
Before their plays and games were organized,
They yelling mix tag, hide-and-seek, hopscotch,
And leapfrog in each other’s way all’s well.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)