Super 3D Noah's Ark is a first-person shoo... er, a first-person feeder released in 1994 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System by the Christian video game developer Wisdom Tree. It is based on the Wolfenstein 3-D engine. The player takes control of Noah, the builder of the Ark from the Biblical Book of Genesis, who has managed to populate his Ark with two of each type of animal in time before the flood. However, the animals have gotten hungry and aggressive, and it's up to Noah to journey around the entire Ark, feeding the animals in a rather unusual way — by shooting food into their mouths with a variety of slingshots.
Given the game's kid-friendly theme, all the gameplay is non-violent: the guns have been replaced with food-launching slingshots, the animals don't die but merely fall asleep when fed enough, and all animals (save for goats) attack by spitting at Noah from a distance.
It was the only commercial SNES game in the United States that did not have an official Nintendo license. As a result, it could only be run by stacking an officially licensed game cartridge on top of the Noah's Ark cartridge.
A DOS port was released in 1995. The game was re-released for the SNES in 2014. A version for modern systems, based on the ECWolf engine, was released in 2015 and is now available on Steam.
Not to be confused with the Konami NES game Noah's Ark.
This game contains the following tropes:
- Abnormal Ammo: What else to say about using slings to shoot feed, cantaloupes and melons right into the animals' mouths?
- Alliterative Name: All the bosses' names are this.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Unlike in Wolfenstein 3-D, you keep all your weapons and ammo between episodes. This makes the later levels a bit more forgiving, as you aren't forced to start every episode with the Small Feed Launcher, and struggle to stay alive while you try to find the better weapons all over again.
- Bears Are Bad News: The final boss of the game is Burt the Bear.
- Enemy Roll Call: Just like in Wolfenstein 3-D, the SNES version ends on this. It is also modified so the animals run up to Noah in addition to this. The PC remaster retains this.
- Food Coma: The main goal is to feed the animals with a slingshot until they fall asleep.
- Guide Dang It!: Unless you're really brushed up on your Bible knowledge, the quizzes are this. Save Scumming won't do much good either, since the game will just randomly pick another question if you attempt to do so.
- Mobile Shrubbery: Bert the Bear hides in a bush for the first part of his boss fight. As he's this game's Hitler, this is a stand-in for the mech suit.
- The Moral Substitute: A Christian-themed, Bible-teaching, non-violent version of Wolfenstein 3-D, of all things.
- Ostrich Head Hiding: The ostriches appear to do this when they are put to sleep.
- Suffer the Slings: Noah's weapon of choice. Even though, unusually, Noah uses slings to launch food instead of attack the animals directly.
- Super Title 64 Advance: The "Super" part in the title comes from "Super Nintendo".
- Unnecessarily Large Vessel: The Ark. Of course, it was pretty big in the Bible story, but it's also full of giant nearly-empty corridors and rooms.
- Vegetarian Carnivore: The final boss is a bear who nevertheless has no problem being fed seed and fruit.
