Spiritual Warfare (NES)

Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Genre: Christian Action
# of Players: 1
ESRB Rating: N/A
US Release: November 1992
Developer: Wisdom Tree
Publisher: Wisdom Tree

Review by: Zack Huffman

Spiritual Warfare is yet another Bible-inspired Nintendo game from those nutty folks over at Wisdom Tree. Basically, this is a Zelda-clone. Instead of Triforce fragments you're trying to collect the different parts of the armor of God, and instead of different swords you get different fruit to throw at sinners as you convert the city. So really, aside from obvious stylistic similarities, comparing Zelda to Spiritual Warfare is a lot like comparing eating cupcakes to being stabbed in the eye with, let's say, a crucifix.

You begin the game with the pear—the weakest of the fruit, as everyone knows. Your first task is to track down the Belt of Truth, which grants you the ability to move large stones. The other weapon you start out with is a vial of God's wrath. These basically act as bombs. That's right—God wants you to blow stuff up. So there's a chance that suicide bombers aren't just misguided assholes. (That's not to say that other bombers, such as the military, aren't misguided assholes.)

The second area you reach is the downtown area, which is filled with bikers and various other hoodlums. While in the downtown area, be sure to avoid the bar. If you go in there you lose a bunch of spirit points.

Spirit points are this game's equivalent to money. With spirit points you can regain health through pray, and you can trade them in for better fruit, like the grapes or the pomegranate. You get spirit points by blowing up bushes and killing, er... I mean converting sinners. Into angels.

Randomly, angels (other than the ones you create) will appear to ask you trivia. It's only if you can correctly answer the Bible trivia that these angels ever help you with spirit points or health refills.

Further adventures take you to a ship yard, the forest, the slums and the beach. Each of these areas is filled with its own variety of sinners that you must convert with your holy fruit justice. Of course, you can also convert them with the vials of God's wrath, but I'm not sure how blowing someone up will convince them to convert to Christianity. On the other hand, I don't see how fruit does the trick, either. Throwing a banana into someone's face doesn't really work when you're trying to convince someone of something other than that bananas are annoying when thrown in the face.

The final area of the game is the prison, which contains the portal to the underworld. The strange thing with the prison is that not only are the prisoners trying to kill you, but so are the guards. In fact, according to this game just about every person except the player is a sinner that needs converting. I'm not sure, but I think this is how cults get started.

Finally, you go head to head with the dark lord himself, Satan. What is Satan's weakness? Obviously, it's fruit. This game makes no damn sense at all. Much like Christianity.

Nintendo: Spiritual Warfare
Fun	Audio	Controls	Visuals	Replay Value	Overall: 2.8
3	3	5	2	1	Overall: 2.8

--- Zack Huffman [03-01-2006}