Chances are when you hear "Christian video game" you either scoff or feel a deep dark sense of shame. But you shouldn't. On paper Biblical games should be overwhelmingly bad-ass. The Good Book is filled with stories that could reach out of the page and punch you right in the face. For example, did you know Moses totally killed a man? When was the last time Mario took a human life? Oh yeah, never.

The reason why the gaming community generally looks down on religious games is because they either stick to the same tired stories without any of the kickass or they take said stories and beat them until they can't be recognized. As a service to you, our humble reader, we present the latter as the four most bizarre religious games. Oh, and if you played any of these you should probably repent.

4) Spiritual Warfare

Did you ever want to play The Legend of Zelda but feared it's evil fantasy elements would start you on a slippery path of sin and sodomy? Well the folks at Wisdom Tree have heard you're cry for help, Mr. Dumbass, and can deliver you from video game evil with Spiritual Warfare, the Christian adventure role playing game!

Not as awesome as it looks, but twice as awful. What a trade off!

Spiritual Warfare plays a lot like Zelda if took anything that looked remotely fun and pissed all over it. You play a young Christian soldier whose entire town is possessed by demons under the command of Satan. It's never really explained how or why this happens, why citizens of neighboring cities aren't at all concerned about this sudden occult uprising, or why any community would use doves as a form of currency, but whatever, we'll roll with it.

Seventy-five doves? What are we, in a recession?

To defeat the sudden and rampant evil you must collect the Armor of God, not unlike the Triforce, and give all the demons the kibosh. But rather than stab the devil out of the townies you must convert them back to Christianity by hurling fruit at them until they pray and then disappear (we're guessing this is the Rapture now). We understand that the fruit represents the fruit of God's spirit (crack open a Bible once in a while, heathen) but come on; half of the possessed have fucking knives. Satan's playing for keeps, Jesus. If you want us to spread your message of peace send us a machete or something.

3) Noah's Ark

For those of you who can't handle the intensity of destroying Satan than perhaps some Old Testament action is what you need. Enter Noah's Ark, a creative retelling of the classic Bible story. And by creative we mean German.

Konami of Europe presents: "Ruining the Bible"

Every level starts with Noah traveling to one of seven continents. Before the level starts there's a cut-scene of the two animals you're supposed to rescue minding their own business before some pagan comes up and kills one of them while capturing the other. Noah takes it on himself to rescue the one animal, completely ignoring that without the second one the species can't reproduce and that God will probably be rip-shit about that. While you're searching for the chosen animal every other animal you encounter will try to kill you out of revenge. Rather than convert them with apples Noah fires lethal projectiles out of what we assume are robot hands (we're guessing that's a translation error from the King James Version). Noah can also fly, giving further credence to the cyborg theory. Along the way you can expand your arsenal by collecting ducks, well known for being nature's weapons depot.

Oh sweet Christ it's coming this way!

As you're slaying hundreds of animals for the well being of one the flood you're supposed to be preparing for is actually occurring. Fortunately RoboNoah can hold his breath indefinitely. But as the water gets higher it becomes much more difficult to move. In such a situation Noah can transform into a fish because, well, fuck it, we don't really know why. We're not sure how the Germans could butcher a story that's over two-thousand years old but at least it didn't end with an invasion of Poland, so that's something.

2) Sunday Funday

Fun fact: the developer Wisdom Tree was actually a part of Color Dreams, an unlicensed developer of NES games. If you ever wondered why Nintendo had a seal of approval it was to protect people from games like Color Dreams'. Naturally they had difficulty finding a market without the seal so they formed Wisdom Tree, slapped a few crosses on their old games and sold them in Christian book stores. One such game is Sunday Funday, the fast paced adventure about getting to Sunday school on time. The game is just a conversion of Color Dreams' Menace Beach, a game whose goal is to rescue your kidnapped girlfriend from Demon Dan and her own disintegrating clothes.

Nintendo, are you... coming on to us?

Along the way you have to fight ninjas, sumo wrestlers and evil clowns- the usual beach going crowd. Sunday Funday updates the enemies, favoring bullies, businessmen and slightly more evil clowns whose only concern is making sure you miss a day of church and possibly pushing the secular agenda. In between levels of Menace Beach you're "treated" to shots of your girlfriend hanging in a dungeon. Every level you beat reveals more of her skin as well as her attitude problem. While the usual Wisdom Tree conversion would leave her spewing Bible verses in her underwear they opted to replace her completely with a not-at-all sexually appealing Sunday school teacher.

C'mon, baby. Take it off and bounce a bit.

The biggest and most bizarre change for Sunday Funday, however, is the end boss. In Menace Beach it was Demon Dan, a gentleman who looked very much like the devil and would fit in quite well with a religious game. Now here's the end boss for Sunday Funday:

Stop and think: what's the ultimate evil in the Bible? If you answered with anything other than a kodiak bear then you're apparently mistaken. It's noble that the game is trying to instill good morales here, but let's get realistic: if an eight-hundred pound grizzly stands between you and your church, Jesus will understand if you phone in sick. We don't care how hot your teacher is, the atheist bear's got this one.

1) Super Noah's Ark 3D

For those of you who beat Noah's Ark with ease and demanded more of a challenge without having to buy a game that didn't concede it's spiritual value, step back- Super Noah's Ark 3D will instill you with so much love for the Lord you may very well cream your jeans. It was released for the Super Nintendo, proving exactly how super it is, and rocks three whole dimensions. Suck on that!

The game is a conversion of Castle Wolfenstein, a first person shooter kindly remembered for it's rigorous abuse of Nazi soldiers. Of course, Noah didn't blast away waves of Germans with a machine gun, so it looks just a little different.

Playing as Noah you wander the ark helping the restless animals sleep by pelting them with fruit (a technique adapted from the Spiritual Warfare Theory of Conversion). It should be noted that, the entire time he's hitting goats with grapes, Noah looks pretty terrified.

If Wisdom Tree had any balls they would have kept the original Wolfenstein premise and just added Noah. The Bible doesn't explicit say God hates Nazis but it's a pretty safe assumption and thus it probably isn't a sin to whomp the SS with watermelons. Sadly all we got instead was non-stop animal abuse, a common theme found in The Gospel According to No One.

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