Noah's Ark (NES) Playthrough
216A playthrough of Konami's 1992 platformer for the NES, Noah's Ark.
As Konami's internal teams were shifting their focus to 16-bit game development, the company became increasingly reliant on titles from European studios to keep their 8-bit line-up afloat. Noah's Ark, created by Source R&D, was one such title, and it stands out for a couple of reasons. It was only released in PAL territories, it's not a port of a computer game, and as far as I know, it's the only official NES release to carry an explicitly religious theme.
You play as Noah - an alcoholic Santa dressed in a circus tent, if the cover art is anything to go by - and you're on a mission from God to rescue an animal for your big boat collection from each of the world's seven continents.
The game is an auto-scrolling run-and-gun platformer that spans twenty-one hazard-filled stages. Though he has to watch out for the typical assortment of angry natives, hungry animals, and spike traps, the biggest threat Noah faces is the flood. He isn't much of a swimmer, and the continually rising waters hobble his movement speed. To deal with this, he can temporarily lower the water level by destroying the plugs in the ground, and he can grab power-ups that change his form. As a bird, he can fly short distances; as a statue, he can walk on beds of spikes; and as a fish, he can speedily cut any path he likes through the water.
The graphics are nice and the gameplay is better than anything you'll find in a Wisdom Tree NES game, but I didn't vibe with it. Noah controls awkwardly, and even with the screen's auto-scrolling making me feel uncomfortably rushed the entire time, I found the action mind-numbingly boring.
So there you have it. A classic Konami platformer, it is not, but if you want a biblical game for a biblical holiday, Noah's Ark is as good as it gets on the NES.
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