Lessons Learned from Christian Video Games
|I remember hearing about Christian Nintendo games when I was a kid, and I think I saw a cartridge of one once, but I never knew much about them. The trend came and went without much notice, but I recently came across a review of one of these games, called Spiritual Warfare, from SydLexia’s website and I was absolutely stunned.
I could say that these games are cheesy or derivative, but that’s not a big deal. Anyone my age who grew up with video games knows that a LOT of video games were sub-par, so that sort of thing isn’t of much interest to me.
What does interest me is the insulting attitude the game had toward social groups. As the character in the game explores different parts of society he comes into contact with racial stereotypes and must throw pears at them in order to convert them. (Yep.) I’ll quote SydLexia’s review:

Other villains you must face include Jehovah’s Witnesses, homeless winos, and Hispanic warehouse workers.
The obvious problem here is this villainizing of normal people. Treating Jews and Buddhists like enemies is not a good thing to teach, and this game is shameful for doing so. Some people criticize main stream video games for desensitizing children to murder and mayhem. In an attempt to make a more “Godly” game, Wisdom Tree showed young people how to marginalize other cultural groups – kids would have been better off playing Doom.
I haven’t got a problem with Christian video games, but using them to teach children social agendas and to look down on other groups in the neighborhood isn’t so cool. (However, going down to Hell at the end of the game and killing Satan is pretty cool.) You can read all of SydLexia.com’s review here and you can play the game online here!
Great post. What’s hilarious is that the Simpsons once showed a parody of this video game being played in the Flanders home by Rod and Todd. Unfortunately, all they really did was make the graphics look better. Many Christians are insulted by the way we’re portrayed in the media, but in this case (zapping native-looking people with a Bible to “fix” them), we provided the ammo.
My favorite line from that episode:
Bart: Hey! I hit that guy! Why didn’t he convert?
Rod: No, you just winged him. Now he’s a Unitarian.
Never played that game, though I did play Bible Adventures, which was apparently made by the same group.
Spiritual Warfare sounds like a lame game. I thought it was gonna be angels fighting demons.
agreed… wow that’s bad.. and @ZSB I do remember that Simpson’s episode and that was hilarious I agree! I think the game was called something like ‘Convert the Heathen’ or something right? lol