Tuesday, April 16, 2013

N is for Noah's Ark

There aren't a lot of arcade games starting with the letter N that really stood out for me.  But, I do remember a strange game I saw when I used to go with the family to the Scandia in Fairfield called Noah's Ark that seemed worth a post.

Noah's Ark was one of those games where you just looked at it and thought why the heck would anyone make a game about this?  As you'd expect if you have any familiarity with the biblical story about Noah, you control Noah as he runs around trying to collect pairs of animals.  That was pretty much it.  I think I played part of a game of it and just left it for someone else to play, as I sought out games with more action.

If memory serves, the game itself was in one of the smaller upright arcade cabinets as opposed to the usual sized ones, probably to try to encourage little kids to play the game.  At the time, Scandia had Noah's Ark mixed into the section of ticket games, hoping for little kid money?  Unfortunately, that game gave no tickets out for scoring achievements, so if anything it was largely treated as a novelty.

Have you ever come across a game and wondered why they made this into a game?  Alternately, what other biblical-themed arcade games have you seen if any?


2 comments:

  1. A couple of years ago when I was up in Seattle for the Penny-Arcade Expo, I played a third party NES game called "The Early Years - King of Kings." The cartridge contained three separate games although I only played the "Jesus in the Temple" story where you play as Joseph looking for the missing Jesus.

    After one stage, I was through as the game didn't seem Biblically accurate. The stage has you, as Joseph running through an uber-fertile land filled with waterfalls, jumping on logs to cross said waterfalls while dodging bees/hornets. I didn't make it too far into the second stage, but maybe I just didn't have enough faith in the game. . .

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    1. Didn't have enough _faith_ in the game. Hahahaha :-)

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