Noah's Ark

Noah's Ark has a reputation among diehards as one of the few NES games released in Europe but not North America, and because of this I've always been curious about it. To get it out of the way, from what I've played this game isn't religious beyond the fact it stars Noah, he has an ark, and there are animals and a flood. I would describe this as a horizontal shooter built around platformer mechanics. Noah can jump and shoot, but the screen is always scrolling (except when fighting a boss) and there is always some amount of water at the bottom of the screen, which you can swim through and jump out of. Noah's jump is very stiff, but when you have the feel for it he's pretty agile. There are a lot of items to collect, and Noah can transform into things such as a bird, a fish and a statue. These not only grant abilities, but as with Super Mario you can take more damage until you lose the suit and revert to regular Noah. You can also upgrade your projectile. The graphics are colourful and the music is nice, and the game is full of bizarre (but kid-friendly) imagery. But game concepts and the difficulty spikes often feel arbitrary, and the stiff controls hold this one back. I can only recommend this to someone raised on NES shooters who isn't afraid of the challenge and is looking for something different. You can earn continues and there is a limited stage select, but this game isn't friendly to unskilled or impatient gamers and the asking price is pretty high for what you're getting. As for this PC port, my Xbox One controller worked just fine and there is a screen-filling border featuring the box art. Otherwise, as far as I'm aware, this is totally bare bones, just a ROM in a wrapper. The game doesn't even save your high scores.

For what it's worth, this works on Steam Deck. Neat little platformer and you can definitely see the Mario influences in here which, given the times this came out (1992) is definitely understandable. It does adhere to the conventions of the day, but I don't remember SMB being this hard, so this is definitely in a class of its own. Dying on a level here sets you back to the beginning, so this is probably more for the platformer purists. My candy a$$ doesn't have the patience for that anymore. Even so, I cannot bear to give this a thumbs down; it just works too well on the Deck and it deserves more love.

There is only partial controller support, which means basically no controller support, so even if I configure my xbox one controller through steam, there is an unacceptable amount of input lag. The emulation is poor at best so it runs slow and choppy. All of this makes it unplayable.

An average platform game, but the best Bible-based game I've ever played. If you are a 8 bits fan, give it a try. Some of the bosses of the game are really annoying to beat! Um jogo plataforma mediano, mas sem dúvida o melhor jogo inspirado na Bíblia que já joguei, Se você é fã de jogos 8 bits, dê uma chance. Um aviso... alguns dos chefes de fase são muito chatos de derrotar!

Noah's Ark is an ancient game from 1992. It's a whopping 32 years old at the time of this review. The game lacks support for any modern gaming display resolutions (or widescreen monitors), hasn't been modernised or updated to run smoothly on modern gaming PCs. Despite this lack of modernisation, it carries a pretty high price tag for such an ancient game. This seems to have been put on Steam as a nostalgia gouge, or just a cash grab to try profit from abandonware. Noah's Ark is just another rejected 2D platformer for the NES. You may be wondering why a crap rejected NES game belongs on Steam and the answer is, you're right, it doesn't. This is another abandonware cash grab by Piko Interactive, who swindle their hands onto old abandoned/broken/dead games then try to swindle Steam gamers into paying them for someone else's old abandoned game. Ethical? Nope. This was never a good platformer. It's a shooter centric platformer ripping off Super Mario Bros to some extent, with one gimmick, you have a time limit as rising flood waters challenge your platforming progress. This was garbage then and it's worse now... it just throws a spotlight on this shady gravedigging that Piko Interactive are doing... polluting Steam with garbage that emulator enthusiasts wouldn't even bother downloading. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio, due to the age of the game, it predates the 16:9 widescreen gaming standard established back in 2006. It's possible they're marketing this towards people using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game is being specifically marketed towards people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming. It's obviously not going to look right on a modern 16:9 gaming display. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. Because this is designed for consoles, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the inferior console gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the console-centric developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for consoles forces upon a game. Once more, console peasants have made gaming worse for everyone. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. Noah's Ark is relatively expensive for an abandonware nostalgia gouge, at $9 USD, and it's not worth it. The game is just too old, hasn't been modernised. And as the old saying goes, you can't go home again. Even when it was new, this was never a triple-A game. This is the kind of game that went almost directly from the warehouse into the cheap bargain bins at the front of the shop. Now, on Steam, without any modernisation? This is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $9 asking price for this game could get you games like "Euro Truck Simulator 2", "Borderlands 2" or "Portal 2". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. There's also thousands of free, superior quality games on Steam. [quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b] Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]

Absolutely painful to play, no information on how the controls work, annoying music. I didn't even understand why i was constantly getting damaged even though i avoided the enemies. I cannot really say much about the levels as i never passed the first stage because of the horrible gameplay.

Horrible game, stay away. Piko please make action 52

https://youtu.be/PPVLoqMZuoY Some may consider this to be a classic but without personal nostalgia the elements of player are nothing but frustrating.

The game sucks because the stiff movement and very slow acceleration movement and the punishing stun when landing from higher up. It is designed to be as inaccurate to control as possible. It is a constant struggle. Not worth remembering. Bad controls = bad game.

This game is Metal Slug for Joel Osteen fans.