The Notorious Rumour : Introduction
The SNES port of Wolfenstein 3D also led to the creation of the only unlicensed SNES game ever produced, Super Noah's Ark 3D : the tamest first-person action game ever created. This is the only unlicensed SNES game ever made, and was produced by Wisdom Tree in 1994. Super 3D Noah's Ark is actually a revamped, and much tamer clone version of Wolfenstein 3D with changed graphics, licensed from id Software.
The rumour was that id gave Wisdom Tree (the creators of Super Noah's Ark) the Wolfenstein 3D source code in retaliation for Nintendo's aforementioned poor treatment. But in reality, the people at id have claimed that "They paid us decent money for it." To this day, id has never confirmed this rumour as true, but has rather officially announced it to be false. But since an undeniable oddity exists in the Super 3D Noah's Ark game, i.e. being the only unlicensed SNES game, the oddity in itself perpetuates this rumour on the net.
I believe such rumours
were whispered because the shape and form of this game were quite
strange. There's a slot on
top of the Noah 3D cartridge where you're supposed to plug a
licensed SNES cartridge in. It cannot be played directly on an SNES console;
you'll have to attach the Noah game shaped like a game genie
to another offficialy licensed SNES cartridge (except for the carts which use the extra 16 pins
on the cart connector like Star Fox) and then plug it into
the SNES slot. Most people say this is because the Noah game
is not a licensed game and it cannot bypass the Nintendo protect
code by itself. Others say it's because the Noah cartridge lacks
some built-in chips that are usually included in licensed SNES
games.
In both cases, people who saw this awkwardly shaped cartridge thought there must be some fishy business going behind this whole stuff, and hence rumoured the above mentioned trouble between id and Nintendo.
My estimation about this problem was quite different from the rumour. I really didn't know (and still don't) if the two companies had a quarrel or not. But considering that nobody enjoys being forced to alter a beloved creation of their own, especially a memorial one like Wolfenstein 3D, maybe the people at id didin't like what they were made to do by Nintendo. Still, I believed the main factor to the birth of this non-licensed game was rather on Wisdom Tree, and not on Nintendo and id. The following is how I thought, initially.
The reason why id and Imagineer had to take out the treasure cross from the game and replace it with a staff was because of Nintendo's strict policy not to lean over to any particular ideological and/or religional partisanship. The cross was too explicitly Christian, whereas the chalice survived because it could be judged as just another goblet or something. It's not hard to imagine Nintendo didn't enjoy Wisdom Tree's idea of a hundred percent christian evangelist game!
But
after thorough research, I began to change opinions. To understand
what I'm about to say, let me first write about the history of
Wisdom Tree.
The Paths of Wisdom Tree
Wisdom Tree has a double-jacked history. It first started out as a company named Color Dreams in 1989. From the beginning, they earned a bad reputation because they were one of the first companies after Tengen to manufacture unlicensed games for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). They never hesitated to show their deviant attitude; they coloured their cartridges in creamy light-blue and always took an awkward stance among the industry. They were pretty much provocative in many ways.
The ironical thing is that despite their offensiveness, the industry never reacted as first anticipated. Due to the next to worst quality of Color Dreams' games, nobody seriously bothered to confront this rebellious company. The usually very strict Nintendo probably thought the same.
With such ill reputations, Color Dreams barely managed to finance themselves. After producing around twenty or so games, and leaving a whole bunch unreleased, the company hit the dust bin. They needed help, fast and desperately. Let's see what the inside people have to say about this :
Someone came up with the idea of doing a Bible-based game and people didn't really take it seriously... about six months later, work actually started on one. No one knew it was going to take off, but it took off like crazy."
- Vance Kozik, Color Dreams/Wisdom Tree programmer
Well, they turned to God. They changed the firm's name to "Wisdom
Tree" and decided to aim pin-point at a more particular
market rather than making games for a larger, general public.
The market they chose was the Christian one. They also changed
their cartridge colour to black, by the way.
The Biblical (but unlicensed)
games they made for the NES were basically clones of popular
NES games. Bible Adventures was actually a shobby
Super Mario Bros. 2 clone game which from time
to time quoted words from the Good Book on screen. One of the
better ones was Spiritual Warfare, which too was
a Zelda clone. They made seven other NES games,
I think.
The
thing is that the people at Wisdom Tree really never made effort
to improve their games, even after the failure of Color Dreams.
Their new unlicensed NES games were no better than their previous
crappy games. Or rather, some of the Wisdom Tree games were only
minor remakes of Color Dreams games! Exodus is
identical to Crystal Mines, and Sunday Funday
to Menace Beach , only that they were given
little changes to have a more religious touch. (Sunday Funday
is the last NES game made in the USA).
Wisdom Tree has since produced games for Genesis, Game
Boy, PC and the SNES. And this brings us back to the only
unlicensed SNES game made for the US version, Super Noah's
Ark 3D.
But before going back to the main topic, let me quote a paragraph from a webpage at www.atarihq.com.. I couldn't figure out for sure who was responsible for this page so I can't give precise credit. I believe he calls himself tsr, or something. Please inform me if someone knows better.
"Although none of these games are really all that good, they are interesting to look through because of their Christian slant and their general oddness. After playing the games, one can understand why Nintendo didn't pursue legal action against them for producing unlicensed games. One can imagine the headlines: "NINTENDO SUES ACTS OF GOD".."
Well, they were way too idiotic, anyway.
Conclusion
Wisdom Tree was kind of phony and fishy from the beginning. It's quite obvious that my first thought of Wisdom Tree as a pious evangelist group has been demolished. They were infamous for making unlicensed clone games for the NES before they even thought about God. So, after all this explaining, could anyone imagine that the people at id didn't know what kind of people they were dealing with? Considering that Wisdom Tree couldn't finance themselves correctly at any time, did they really pay enough for the game as id states? I have to admit, I'm really suspicious about this. They had to have known that these people made mediocre unlicensed games, and if they did, they must've had a good reason for dealing with them. To me, it seems like they sought for revenge at God's Will.
Well, that's about it. the only thing that troubles me is this question : "Why did Wisdom Tree make such a funny shaped cartridge after all?" Even if they couldn't finance the in-built chips, they could've tried something else, couldn't they? If it were for the licensing code, why couldn't Wisdom Tree go around the lockout themselves? The only reasonable conclusion I could think of was that such half-hearted attitude is the foremost character of Wisdom Tree's philosophy in game making, in general (same quote) :
"As long as the Bible theme is there somehow, don't
worry too much about the rest of the game."
Maybe they do believe in God.
At least they seem to believe God All Mighty will take care of
Nintendo!
