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46-625: Wisdom Tree, Inc. is an American developer of Christian video games . It was an offshoot of Color Dreams , one of the first companies to work around Nintendo 's 10NES lockout chip technology for the Nintendo Entertainment System . Color Dreams formed the Wisdom Tree subsidiary in 1990 in an effort to circumvent Nintendo's restrictions against publishers of unlicensed video games for the NES by selling their games at Christian book stores which

92-548: A Christian vampire hunter named Simon Belmont who carried weaponry such as holy water , crosses that function as boomerangs, and a blue rosary which cleared all on-screen enemies. Konami released a game based on Noah's Ark in Japan and Europe, but was never released in the United States, due to the aforementioned reluctance of Nintendo of America towards religious content. Nintendo of America's viewpoint on religious content at

138-555: A Christian first-person shooting game with less violence because violent video games like Doom or Quake were facing controversy at the time due to the Columbine massacre. The first Christian FPS game to be released in July of 1999 was Saints of Virtue , developed by Shine Studios, a small video game company that was run by three people. In October 1999, The War in Heaven was released by

184-472: A Windows remake of Super 3D Noah's Ark was released on Steam through the Steam Greenlight service. In 2024, an official sequel to Baby Boomer was released on PS4 , PS5 and Epic Games Store under license of Wisdom Tree and Piko Interactive. Christian video game These games usually emphasize the teachings of the ministry of Jesus , or retell Bible stories such as Noah's Ark or

230-476: A block with a trumpet blast reveals an item or power-up . All the levels have a time limit. To advance in the game, Joshua must pillage enough gold, silver, brass, and iron to meet the quota for the level. He must also collect five "Joshua questions". With all these attained, he navigates to the exit. The obstacles to these goals are movable boulders, immovable barriers, destructible objects, enemy soldiers, citizens, goats, et al. After each game level (including

276-431: A disadvantage. Color Dreams had great difficulty accessing the retail market, and worked outside of mainstream NES distribution channels. Also, many of its games were reported to have problems getting to run properly, occasionally even requiring instructions on the cartridge, and were criticized for their lack of quality and gameplay. The problems with running Color Dreams games stemmed from physical changes in later models of

322-562: A lineup of Genesis games, all of them ports of Amiga games, but were all canceled. Other unfinished Color Dreams games include a PC game called Hellraiser . Another Wolfenstein 3D engine game, it was canceled upon the release of Doom because Color Dreams decided it could not compete. Maggots for NES has the player character trapped inside a human corpse and must escape while avoiding the maggots which infest it. Wisdom Tree mainly licenses its games. The company released an all-in-one "TV controller" system featuring seven of its NES games in

368-620: A little light animation; the games were distributed by Baker Book House, developed by Brian A. Rice Inc., and published by Educational Publishing Concepts for Apple II and Commodore 64. Series 1 ( Early Heroes of the Bible , Searching for a King , The Boy Jesus , and The Early Church ) was released in 1984, and Series 2 ( Moses and the Wilderness Wanderings , A Week That Changed the World , Paul's Missionary Journeys , and Israel's Golden Years )

414-756: A place for Christian game developers to gather, make deals with other Christian developers, and gain encouragement from developers with a shared faith. Game Developer , affiliated with the Game Developers Conference , featured an article by Greg Campbell titled "How to Handle Christianity in Video Games" in 2018. The article covered historical depictions of Christianity in video games, and suggested how developers can incorporate Christianity into their Christian game design. While other Christian media formats such as music , literature , and film have big budget record labels , publishers , and blockbusters ,

460-811: A single, self-contained unit. Its website also has games by other developers. Heaven Bound is one example of a more modern 3D game for the PC. These games are produced on 3D Game Studio (such as Joseph and Galilee Flyer by Sunday Software), using the default models that come with the program. In 2010, all Wisdom Tree NES games were on the official Wisdom Tree website via a Java -based NES emulator . In 2013, retro game publisher Piko Interactive licensed cartridge reprints of Wisdom Tree games, starting with Super 3D Noah's Ark . In 2014, retro gaming website Stone Age Gamer began selling licensed T-shirts based on numerous Wisdom Tree properties including: Bible Buffet , Sunday Funday , Super 3D Noah's Ark , and Exodus . In 2015,

506-430: A small video game company called Eternal Warriors. The game was developed by Andrew Lunstad and designed by Theodore Beale . During the 2000s, N'Lightning Software Development released two first-person shooter games: Catechumen (2000) and Ominous Horizons: A Paladin's Calling (2001). The annual Christian Game Developers Conference (CGDC) was started in 2001. In 2005, The Bible Game by Mass Media Games

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552-492: Is a sequel to 1991's Exodus , which was a redesign of Crystal Mines (1989), a title developed by Ken Beckett for Wisdom Tree's predecessor, Color Dreams. In addition to changes in theme, graphics, and game mechanics , Joshua introduces a password feature for revisiting a game level. The game has 100 levels, 100 quizzes, and 10 bonus stages . Unlike Exodus , the game has no background music . Whereas in Crystal Mines

598-673: The Wolfenstein 3D engine features the player as Noah, quelling upset animals on the Ark by flinging sleep-inducing fruit at them. As the only North American Super NES cartridge to not use the standard Nintendo-manufactured shell, its shape resembles the Super NES Game Genie or Sonic & Knuckles on the Genesis, with a pass-through cartridge port at the top; the game requires a Nintendo-licensed cartridge plugged into this pass-through, bypassing

644-636: The Sega Genesis and Game Boy , and Bible-reading programs (both King James and NIV versions) for Game Boy. Sunday Funday is a 1995 conversion of the Color Dreams game Menace Beach , and is the last commercial NES release in the United States . Wisdom Tree made the only unlicensed commercially released game for the North American Super NES , Super 3D Noah's Ark . This conversion of

690-511: The id Software Wolfenstein 3D engine for the SNES game Super 3D Noah's Ark . The game has been reprinted and rereleased a number of times since. After the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, there was a revival of Christian video games specifically in the first-person shooter genre. Ralph Bagley of N'Lightning Software claims that publishers were more receptive to the concept of

736-544: The independent record label Word Entertainment , major media conglomerates like NBCUniversal which is parent company of both Big Idea Entertainment and G4 Media . While companies like G4 are not Christian media outlets, NBCUniversal operates both VeggieTales Christian studio Big Idea Entertainment and G4 Media, formerly the G4 TV network , as in-name only production units. Similarly Warner Bros. Discovery operates their interactive and Rooster Teeth studios separately from

782-685: The player character is a gun-wielding robot who mines a newly discovered exoplanet , Joshua is a tribal leader of Israel who infiltrates and pillages the city of Jericho. He attacks enemies and destroys obstacles with blasts from a shofar (a Jewish ceremonial horn). Enemies include Amorites , Hittites , and other Canaanites ; Balaam features as a slightly more powerful enemy. Joshua's trumpet blasts (called "toots" in-game) also destroy blocks of Jericho's wall; "Israelite discontent", " Achan 's sin", and "foreign idols" ( cult images ) are likewise represented by destructible tiles. The trumpet blasts are symbolized by white quavers . Occasionally, destroying

828-556: The video game era. Many of its games are partial conversion themed re-releases of Color Dreams games. A Wisdom Tree product catalog shows Joshua & the Battle of Jericho as a side-scrolling game using the Bible Adventures engine. The actual released game has the engine of Crystal Mines and Exodus . The company's first release as Wisdom Tree is Bible Adventures , a three-in-one multicart with many gameplay elements from

874-723: The American Super Mario Bros. 2 , applied to three different Bible stories: Noah collecting animals for the Ark , saving Baby Moses from the Pharaoh 's men, and re-enacting the story of David and Goliath . The company sold 350,000 copies, encouraging this path. Other Wisdom Tree games include Exodus (a conversion of Color Dreams's Crystal Mines game, with the story of the Israelites ' 40-year desert trek), King of Kings (similar to Bible Adventures , but featuring three events in

920-494: The Battle of Jericho Joshua & the Battle of Jericho is a 1992 Christian video game developed and published by Wisdom Tree . The game is themed on the Battle of Jericho described in the Book of Joshua , in which the Israelites topple the defensive wall of the city of Jericho by encircling it and blowing their trumpets. As a tile-based action puzzle game , Joshua &

966-486: The Battle of Jericho was one of the few Christian video games of its day that did not adhere strictly to a Bible quiz format. However, the player is asked five multiple choice questions about the Book of Joshua between levels . In 1992, Wisdom Tree published the game in the United States for the Nintendo Entertainment System , and later ported it to Game Boy (1993), MS-DOS (1994), and Sega Genesis (1994). The game

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1012-525: The Christian video game industry has primarily been led by indie games and is generally devoid of AAA developers . This has led to criticism related to quality control concerns. Many major publishers and studios are highly diversified, with brands under their moniker with both Christian media and video game culture . This would include mass media Warner Bros. Discovery which owns Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment , Rooster Teeth and distributes

1058-672: The Game Boy Advance and PlayStation 2. In 2006, Left Behind: Eternal Forces , a real-time strategy game, was released by Inspired Media Entertainment based on Left Behind series of novels; it had sequels released in 2007, 2010, and 2011. The Adam's Venture games, first released in 2009, have made appearances on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. The 1980s Christian anime Superbook , rebooted in 2011 as an animated series, has had educational video game adaptations from 2014 and onward for browsers and mobile devices. The 2014 game That Dragon, Cancer

1104-404: The NES; long-time Color Dreams employee Vance Kozik (best known as the programmer of Menace Beach ) recalled having customers who called Color Dreams and read off the serial number of their NES unit so that they could send them a compatible cartridge. The quality issues with the games were in part due to the reverse engineering required to develop unlicensed NES games, which effectively forced

1150-465: The Nintendo licensing system with its workaround of Nintendo's 10NES lockout chip, Nintendo was displeased that it was receiving no revenues from Color Dreams games, and wanted to prevent other companies from following. Nintendo threatened to cease selling games to retailers that sold unlicensed NES games. Because retailers could not afford to stop doing business with Nintendo, unlicensed companies were at

1196-825: The Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia film series, including The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008), as well as the VeggieTales franchise in the form of LarryBoy and the Bad Apple (2006) for

1242-512: The Super NES's lockout protection. A PC port was released on Steam in 2015, with retouched features such as support for widescreen resolutions and achievements. 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". Color Dreams pamphlets tout

1288-419: The case to Christian bookstores using lines like: "This game promotes Bible literacy and teaches children about the Bible while they play a 'fun and exciting' Super Mario Bros. style video game." Ultimately, these efforts proved successful, and Color Dreams gained a new distribution channel for its games, and launched a new genre of video games, without direct competition. Kozik later commented, "No one knew it

1334-974: The company's programmers to work within stricter technical limitations than licensed NES developers had, such as fewer sprites displayed on-screen. In 1990, Color Dreams began to consider producing games with biblical themes. At the time, there were few religious video games for console systems. Officials at Color Dreams saw a market for them and that many stores that would be most interested in retailing Christian games. Christian bookstores were likely not to sell video games at all, and thus not vulnerable to pressure from Nintendo. Christian bookstores sold much more than books, like religious movies , Contemporary Christian music , and other goods, but not video games. To convince these stores to sell religious games, Color Dreams changed its name to Wisdom Tree and promoted this new genre of video games. Wisdom Tree sent Christian bookstores 3-foot Bible Adventures displays, and VHS cassettes showing gameplay. These promotional videos made

1380-485: The distribution of Word Entertainment. Some of the early Christian video games are sought after by computer museums , particularly video game museums and private video game collections . This is due to them being distributed in small numbers at hobbyist conventions or at Christian bookstores and magazines, instead of high-volume video game retailers. One such example is the 1983 Atari 2600 game Red Sea Crossing , of which only two copies are known to have appeared on

1426-469: The earliest Christian video games were written by the company BibleBytes in 1982 for the TRS-80 Color Computer . That year, the company released eleven games for the computer, including such titles as Manna from Heaven , Moses' Rod , and Noah's Ark . These games were compiled together and released under the name Bible Computer Games . Several Christian-themed computer programming books, based on

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1472-463: The early life of Jesus Christ) and Bible Buffet (a "video board game" with Bible quizzes). Spiritual Warfare is an action-adventure game similar in style to The Legend of Zelda , with the requisite religious theme where 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 released ports of some of these games to

1518-591: The game Abzû . In 1984, then-editor and president of Christianity Today V. Gilbert Beers and his son Ronald A. Beers worked for Baker Book House and co-authored Bible stories for children in the form of the Baker Street Kids franchise, which consists of the titular gang of children who dress up for a Sunday school play and reenact stories from the Bible. The books were adapted into educational computer games in which religious youth must answer questions about Bible stories correctly before they get treated to

1564-505: The life of Jesus . While Christian video games are considered a genre, they usually intersect with other genres, such as early computer title Bible Computer Games which is an educational game , action-adventure games Spiritual Warfare and Super 3D Noah's Ark , the Guitar Praise series of rhythm games , or the simulation video game I am Jesus Christ . They are usually developed to appeal to Christian audiences. Many of

1610-576: The original BibleBytes Bible Computer Games source code , were written by John and Joyce Conrod in 1984. The Conrods were the primary authors of the first two books while their son, Phil Conrod, was one of the original game developers and served as technical editor. The first BASIC programming book, "Computer Bible Games", included the BASIC source code for the Timex/Sinclair, Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer, and TI-99/4A . The book included tips for adapting

1656-483: The programs for the Apple II , Atari 8-bit computers , VIC-20 , Commodore 64 , and TRS-80 Since then, PC Enterprises and BibleByte Books has published several "Computer Bible Games" programming books for Microsoft Small Basic, Visual Basic, Visual C# and Java. Another Christian video game pioneer was Bernard K. Bangley, who wrote Bible BASIC: Bible Games for Personal Computers with his son, David Bangley. Bible BASIC

1702-553: The resale market, one of which sold for over $ 10,000 in 2013. Another such Atari 2600 game was the 1982 The Music Machine , which sold for over $ 5,000 in 2017. The 1980s also saw the earliest video game adaptions of Narnia , in the form of Adventures in Narnia and Adventures in Narnia: Dawn Treader . None of these games released on the NES, probably due to Nintendo of America's strict guidelines against religious content at

1748-721: The service by Piko Interactive in 2015 and 2017, and the role-playing simulation title I Am Jesus Christ launched in 2019, that same year Shepherd of Light was released by John Paul the Great Catholic University , and in 2021 action-adventure game John Christian and the turn-based RPG Paladin Dream were released. Christian video game journalism is common for Christian news and media outlets. Some churches are known to incorporate game journalism into their services, which former theology student turned video game journalist Andy Robertson did with an interactive sermon involving

1794-588: The time has been criticized, it even caused the censorship and modification of small-scale Christian iconography including 1989's DuckTales and Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse . Starting in the late 1980s, the unlicensed game developer Wisdom Tree developed a number of specifically Christian video games for the NES, such as Spiritual Warfare . As time went on Nintendo of America reversed their stance on religious material, now even overtly Christian games release on Nintendo platforms, just as Nintendo of Japan had always allowed. In 1994, Wisdom Tree licensed

1840-399: The time. Nintendo of America's corporate stance at the time was that religious symbolism was forbidden. Nevertheless, even officially developed Nintendo of Japan products sometimes featured Christian symbols; for example, The Legend of Zelda featured a Christian cross on Link 's shield. One of the first NES games to use overt Christian symbolism was Castlevania , a game which followed

1886-476: Was critically acclaimed as an example of video games as an art form ; the game touches on the concepts of love, mortality, and faith. The game involves couple Ryan and Amy Green raising their son Joel, who had been diagnosed with cancer, and the experience was the subject of the documentary film Thank You for Playing . Steam has allowed indie games to reach a wider audience. The Wisdom Tree games Super 3D Noah's Ark and Spiritual Warfare were ported to

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1932-556: Was going to take off, but it took off like crazy." Nintendo never threatened any legal action against Wisdom Tree, and probably feared a public relations backlash from parents and religious groups. Color Dreams also published games with the Bunch Games label. In 1996, its StarDot Technologies division started selling digital security cameras. Wisdom Tree's games have a Christian theme, and were often sold in Christian bookstores. Most games adapt Bible stories to appeal to children of

1978-557: Was not subject to pressure by Nintendo. Color Dreams was based in Brea, California , and was started by Daniel Lawton, a self-educated computer programmer and vocal opponent of Nintendo 's licensing policy. Founded in 1988, Color Dreams was one of the largest producers of unlicensed games for the NES , but, due to pressure from Nintendo, it faced many difficulties getting retailers to stock its games. Although Color Dreams violated no laws in opting out of

2024-498: Was published by Harper & Row in December, 1983. His book included type-in BASIC programs to create Bible games. All of these Bible themed programming books were designed for Christian schools . The annual Christian Game Developers Conference (CGDC) was started in 2001 by Tim Emmerich, founder of the small independent studio GraceWorks Interactive. The conference has been described as

2070-578: Was released for the Game Boy Advance , PlayStation 2 , and Xbox . That same year, the first version of Dance Praise was released by Digital Praise for PC. Emo's MatchMaker , a puzzle video game developed by Omni Creative Group and published by Big Fish Games for Microsoft Windows in early 2007, gives Biblical related advice to husbands and/or wives. The 2000s also saw the first adaptations of Christian media franchises for major video game platforms. Those include games based on The Lord of

2116-428: Was released in 1985-86. Major Christian news outlets Christianity Today , Christian Broadcasting Network , Relevant , and Trinity Broadcasting Network , often include video game journalism as a part of their coverage. And some outlets specialize in video game culture including Christ Centered Gamer and Geeks Under Grace , journalists at these outlets often work for other outlets as well. Joshua %26

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