Wisdom Tree pass the collection plate around for a new Kickstarter
Baby Moses, Baby Moses, Baby Moses.
Famed Christian video game producers Wisdom Tree are still around! Or at least, they are in the guise of new old game publishers Piko Interactive, who are still very much into selling their old wares -- we've already seen them offer up collections of Wisdom Tree's old NES games in the past, and now they're doing so again! However this time around, they're actually going for proper cartridge runs, including one for a version of a game that's not been seen before at all. Because of this, they're asking for $30,000 on Kickstarter to make it happen, and you can check the campaign out here.
Of course, Wisdom Tree don't exactly have a good reputation as developers -- perhaps the most famous producers of Christian-centric video games, the majority of their games have generally received a pretty solid kicking from almost any retro gamer with a blog or YouTube account over the years, from the Angry Video Game Nerd on down. They're unlicensed, they're Christian, they're technically quite shoddy...yeah, that was always going to happen. Still, Wisdom Tree have generally been good sports about all of this -- especially since the deal with Piko -- and they're more than happy to keep giving these games exposure and playing on their reputation as lousy titles. .
So, what can you expect from this Wisdom Tree kickstarter? First up is the Wisdom Tree collection featuring all of your typical Wisdom Tree games, only this time for the Game Boy Advance following a request from a fan. It's got Bible Adventures, the Zelda-aping Spiritual Warfare, Sunday Funday and all of that ofther stuff for the price of $40. Second, there's Noah's Ark for the NES -- this game was actually published by Konami originally, but it only came out in Europe. Wisdom Tree have since bought the rights to the game, which is a thoroughly acceptable platformer with pretty neat graphics -- this will be first time that the game has been published in the U.S., and it's $50. Finally, there's Super 3D Noah's Ark for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis -- a new port over from the original SNES version, this was previously a stretch goal for the successful "Arkade" Kickstarter but didn't quite make it, and now this strange conversion of Wolfenstein 3D is up on the $55 pledge tier.
What to make of this Kickstarter, then?...hmmmm. It's certainly something for any collectors or admirers of this particularly esoteric label, and it's always nice to see new cartridges being printed. One does wonder if there is a limit to just how many times one can re-release Bible Buffet, mind you, or if in the year of our lord 2017 everyone who was curious about Bible Adventures or King of Kings has had their curiosity sated by now. That said, with over $6,000 of the campaign funded after 2 days I dare say that Wisdom Tree/Piko will probably end up reaching their goal, although the stretch goals for unreleased NES puzzle game Scarabeus and a port of Super 3D Noah's Ark for the Dreamcast may perhaps go unfulfilled. Perhaps they will soon form part of a new Kickstarter campaign to port the Wisdom Tree games onto say, the Nintendo DS? Time will tell.
