Super 3D Noah's Ark (official title, also sometimes called Super Noah's Ark 3D) is a first-person maze shooter by Wisdom Tree for both Super Nintendo and DOS.
Overview[]
The goal is to manage Noah's deeds in his ark for six days by shooting feed into the mouths of restless animals so they can fall asleep. The game runs on the Wolfenstein 3D engine, retaining its fast action and emphasis on navigation. Due to being based on the SNES version of Wolfenstein 3D, it also features weapons and items from the Mac Family versions of Wolfenstein 3D (The Cantaloupe and Watermelon Launchers function the same as the Flamethrower and Rocket Launcher, respectively). Unique to the PC version are quiz scrolls. Picking them up brings up a multiple-choice question about the biblical story of Noah's Ark. Quizzes like these often appeared in other Wisdom Tree games, in order to qualify as educational. If the player gets the quiz right, they recover 25% of their health and 10 feed (25 feed if the player is at full health). If they get it wrong, they are only healed by 4% and receive no feed.
The game has 30 levels (two of them secret) split unevenly between six episodes, the same amount as the SNES version of Wolfenstein 3D.
- Episode 1: Carl the Camel (3 levels)
- Episode 2: Ginny the Giraffe (4 levels)
- Episode 3: Melvin the Monkey (4 normal levels, 1 secret)
- Episode 4: Kerry the Kangaroo (5 levels)
- Episode 5: Ernie the Elephant (6 levels)
- Episode 6: Burt the Bear (6 normal levels, 1 secret)
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Trivia[]
- This is one of the few known cartridges to have a slot to insert another cartridge, similar to the Lock-On of Sonic & Knuckles. Unlike Lock-On, the purpose of an extra slot in this case was to override the Super Nintendo's copy-protection chip which only ran games licensed by Nintendo (or the ones thought to be licensed by Nintendo).
- Piko Entertainment published a 2014 re-release of the game for SNES, PC, and Genesis. The SNES re-release is inside a normal cartridge, unlike the 1994 version.
- The Steam release of the PC version runs on ECWolf, a Wolfenstein 3D source port. This is actually sanctioned by the port's developer, Braden Obrzut. They recommend purchasing this version if you wish to support them financially, as they get a significant cut of the profits.
- This was the only unlicensed SNES game to be commercially released in the American market.
- Contrary to popular belief, id Software did not give Color Dreams the license to use the Wolfenstein 3D engine out of displeasure at the censorship in Wolfenstein 3D's SNES port. The game started out as a DOS game themed around the 1989 horror movie Hellraiser, which Color Dreams had already obtained for use in a cancelled NES game. Color Dreams then additionally licensed the Wolfenstein 3D engine for a cheap price due to id Software believing it had outlived its usefulness. The Hellraiser branding was soon dropped due to Color Dreams moving most of their resources to bible-themed family-friendly titles published under the label Wisdom Tree, and Hellraiser was seen as conflicting with that image.
- This game is one of the only games that use the SNSF music format, the other ones being Mario's Early Years, Wayne's World, and Lord of the Rings.
- The DOS version is one of two games running on the Wolfenstein 3D engine to not use the Id Music Format for its soundtrack (the other being Rise of the Triad: Dark War), instead storing music in General MIDI format and converting it to work with AdLib synthesizers.