|
|
Post by Discoalucard on Feb 20, 2012 11:03:41 GMT -5
A unique topic, I think. Most bible-themed games are held with contempt by the gaming audience, largely because they tend to be pretty bad. This article looks them in a different light though - there's some interesting history behind them, at least: www.hardcoregaming101.net/christianfps/christianfps.htm |
|
|
|
Post by TΛPETRVE on Feb 20, 2012 11:09:26 GMT -5
I wonder what Christian people think of Cyclone's Requiem: Avenging Angel or especially Shiny's Messiah  . |
|
|
|
Post by Ike on Feb 20, 2012 11:46:57 GMT -5
I actually played a legit copy of Super 3D Noah's Ark. We had a copy at the store that I would frequently pull out to amuse and horrify customers. I was never able to get the owner to sell it to me in spite of the fact that it sat hidden behind a bunch of other shit on a shelf for 4 years but.
It's exactly as awful as you'd expect!
|
|
|
|
Post by TheChosen on Feb 20, 2012 12:57:48 GMT -5
Good stuff. I remember playing War in Heaven couple of years ago and yeah, not that great. Plenty of good ideas though.
Is there any solid proof that id gave Wolfenstein 3D engine to Wisdom Tree? I know they're both identical and its fairly obvious that its based on that game, but I've never read any interview or something like that where someone from either of the group admitted this.
|
|
|
|
Post by Weasel on Feb 20, 2012 13:37:48 GMT -5
Is there any solid proof that id gave Wolfenstein 3D engine to Wisdom Tree? I know they're both identical and its fairly obvious that its based on that game, but I've never read any interview or something like that where someone from either of the group admitted this. A little off-the-cuff history lesson... Color Dreams (the company that would become Wisdom Tree) had somehow managed to get rights to make a video game based on the movie Hellraiser. At first they were making it for the NES, with wild rumors and speculation claiming that their cartridge contained additional hardware to make the NES graphics nearly SNES-quality. This version of the game was canceled due to budget constraints, and Color Dreams were in contact with id Software to license the Wolf3D engine (PC version) to make a PC FPS based on Hellraiser. Supposedly there are some graphics sheets floating on the 'net that come from this version of the game, but beyond these, no prototype is known to exist. In 1993, while id Software was working on Doom, Nintendo and the Japanese publisher Imagineer contacted id to get an SNES port of Wolfenstein 3D. The guys at id agreed, and gave the project to a contractor to finish in nine months. Eight months later, deadlines were looming, and this contractor had apparently jumped ship, with absolutely nothing to show for it. The guys at id were forced to put Doom on hold and spend a mere three weeks making their own SNES port from scratch. But of course, Nintendo didn't want any blood, dogs, or Nazi references in the game, so id begrudgingly Bowdlerized their game to make it more palatable to Nintendo. The whole experience supposedly soured them so much that, when Wisdom Tree (formerly Color Dreams) approached id software with the idea of using the Wolfenstein 3D engine to make Super 3D Noah's Ark without getting it licensed by Nintendo, they were all too happy to "strike back" at Nintendo and gave Wisdom Tree the SNES engine. I don't really have much of a source for the Hellraiser thing (it's kinda floating around the net) but there are some references to this event in the book Masters of Doom if I recall correctly. |
|
|
|
Post by TheChosen on Feb 20, 2012 14:49:39 GMT -5
Thanks for the lesson. Gotta check out that book someday.
Speaking of Hellraiser, thats a rather interesting case as well. I've seen ad-scans of it and heard about its "magic" tech, but I find it hard to believe that it was being made a company like Color Dreams who cant seem to make decent and fully functional game.
|
|
|
|
Post by bladededge on Feb 20, 2012 17:47:58 GMT -5
This is fantastic journalism. Kudos for the depths the author dug around in for this.
The line in 'The War in Heaven''s section about a "state-of-the-art non-Euclidean portal-based engine" amuses me incredibly. So essentially was he making it a selling point that his engine used information on where rooms connect to lay out maps (like 3D Realms' Duke 3D or Bungie's Marathon) rather than their actual locations in 3D space (most everything else)? Did the game have any maps where that's actually used to effect, like Marathon Infinity's 5-D Space deathmatch map, or was that what it sounds like, someone using gussied-up words to sell something mundane?
A criticism, though, and I must stress how disappointed I was to have to make this. Where's Doom? I mean, you spend the entire game personally destroying the minions of Evil, to the point where the second half of the game is set in Hell itself. The article is incomplete! Incomplete, I say!
|
|
|
|
Post by Narushima on Feb 20, 2012 18:16:32 GMT -5
Nice article. As always, it's very interesting to discover these kinds of games.
|
|
|
|
Post by Weasel on Feb 20, 2012 18:41:04 GMT -5
A criticism, though, and I must stress how disappointed I was to have to make this. Where's Doom? I mean, you spend the entire game personally destroying the minions of Evil, to the point where the second half of the game is set in Hell itself. The article is incomplete! Incomplete, I say! Doom wasn't specifically marketed to Christians, and the excessive violence and presence of Satanic symbols pretty much alienated most of the Christian demographic at the time. |
|
|
|
Post by Sac (a.k.a Icaras) on Feb 20, 2012 23:06:07 GMT -5
I'd have to agree, DOOM is very clearly not a Christian game, its a sci fi game, where the protagonist (Whose religion isn't cover and un important) happens to go to hell. And even then, its kind of a techno-organic hell, and not even the tradional way one thinks of hell .
I'd hardly say any game (or whatever) that makes references to heaven or hell is "Christian".
|
|
|
|
Post by Weasel on Feb 20, 2012 23:15:16 GMT -5
I'd hardly say any game (or whatever) that makes references to heaven or hell is "Christian". I really have to wonder what the Christian fundamentalist community thinks of Xenogears or Shin Megami Tensei. =P |
|
|
|
Post by TheGunheart on Feb 20, 2012 23:38:19 GMT -5
I'll be honest, I was exceedingly disappointing that they failed to cause any controversy. Imagine how much sales might have gone up from the free publicity.
|
|
|
|
Post by Snarboo on Feb 21, 2012 9:08:06 GMT -5
An addendum to the Eternal War: Shadows of Light article: not only was the engine based on a source port of Quake, but some of the models were lifted from a popular Quake mod known as Future vs Fantasy Quake. Dawn of Darkness is actually a Quake 2 mod, the ModDB page for which can be found here. |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2012 10:11:36 GMT -5
I'd hardly say any game (or whatever) that makes references to heaven or hell is "Christian". I really have to wonder what the Christian fundamentalist community thinks of Xenogears or Shin Megami Tensei. =P "J@ps need to do their homework." Which is true; based on games and anime half of their understanding came from Wikipedia or their imaginations. SMT is better about it than most other JRPGs though. |
|
|
|
Post by genesisknight on Feb 21, 2012 13:20:31 GMT -5
Hey guys, I'm the author of the Christian FPS article. Thanks for the comments, and I hope you guys enjoyed the read. Is there any solid proof that id gave Wolfenstein 3D engine to Wisdom Tree? I know they're both identical and its fairly obvious that its based on that game, but I've never read any interview or something like that where someone from either of the group admitted this. The information in my article (Wisdom Tree licensing the Wolf3D engine) is taken directly from Masters of Doom, which in turn is based off of interviews with id. Did the game have any maps where that's actually used to effect, like Marathon Infinity's 5-D Space deathmatch map, or was that what it sounds like, someone using gussied-up words to sell something mundane? I didn't observe anything like that. Considering Beale's track record I'm pretty sure it was just marketing buzzwords. I couldn't quite figure out what engine he had used. I think it might have been an early version of Genesis3D? Couldn't verify this so I didn't put it in the article. An addendum to the Eternal War: Shadows of Light article: not only was the engine based on a source port of Quake, but some of the models were lifted from a popular Quake mod known as Future vs Fantasy Quake. Dawn of Darkness is actually a Quake 2 mod, the ModDB page for which can be found here. Thanks for the information. I'll ask Kurt to change the Dawn of Darkness line to call it a Quake 2 mod, and I'll also put in a line about FvF. |
|
.
