Episode 700: The 700 Club (Games About the Bible) (Patreon)

Jeremy: Here with episode 700, we complete the journey that began with episode 666: talking about the weird relationship between games and Christianity. We began by talking about how religion blamed video games for turning kids evil, then moved along to the way Christianity's history in Japan shaped the unique way that Japanese games tend to present the religion and its iconography. Here, we tackle the most prosaic aspect of the topic—namely, old games about Christianity. We hoped to cover the entire span of the history of games about the Bible, but you know how Retronauts does this day... we didn't quite hit everything. But we got the old-school stuff, no problem!

Now, the material we tackled here has been covered pretty extensively by others in the form of drive-by punchlines. Ha ha! Aren't these games bad and silly! And, well, they are. But rather than just laugh at them, I've called in some ringers to give them a more measured analysis. We talk about how these games are mostly bad, yes, but we also look at how well they actually represent the material that inspired them. Some of them are surprisingly faithful (in a very literal sense!), while others are, uh, not. Join your former church kid host (that's me), Bible pros Benito Cereno and Jared Petty, informed skeptic Chris Sims, and alternate perspective provider Diamond Feit as we savor the fruits of the tree of knowledge... video game history knowledge.

Anyway, I think this wraps it up for my little series on religious video games. There are certainly other forms of faith that appear in games, but nothing I can speak to from an authentic, personally lived point of view. So I leave those topics to others. My vow to you: going forward, I'mma be all secular, all the time.

Edits by Greg Leahy; art by Leeann Hamilton

08:15 - Genesis: "Jesus He Knows Me"

17:36 - The Ten Commandments (1956 Film): The Red Sea

24:42 - The Prince of Egypt (1998 Film): Red Sea | King of Kings (FC): BGM 3

34:53 - 4Him: "Ride of Life"

44:44 - Sunday Funday: Ride of Life (Karaoke ver.)

56:04 - The Star (2017 Film): Mary, Did You Know?

1:08:25 - The Righteous Gemstones (Season 3): Bible Bonkers (Theme Song)

1:14:15 - WWE & Jim Johnston: "Break the Walls Down" (Chris Jericho)

1:23:57 - Joshua & the Battle of Jericho (GB): Help Screen | Spiritual Warfare (NES): Title

1:36:43 - Noah's Ark (NES): Africa

1:45:59 - Blondie: "Rapture"

1:55:16 - Super 3D Noah's Ark (PC): BGM 6

Closing - The Righteous Gemstones (Season 4): Turn the Other Cheek