Review:
This book wasn't initially on my personal list of Boss Fight Books to read - I was more focused on games I'd played or games that interested me but that I knew I wasn't going to play. However, at some point while reading reviews, I came across some positive mentions of this book and decided to give it a shot. I'm glad I did.
Durham looks at Color Dreams (a game development company), Wisdom Tree (Color Dreams' Christian games offshoot), the various people involved, and the games they made. I'd never heard of any of these companies or games, but it was interesting to read about how aspects of early Nintendo history I'd read about in other books resulted in the creation of Color Dreams, which developed and published unlicensed games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Although most of the people involved in Color Dreams were either atheists or agnostics, Wisdom Tree was born from business savvy - Christian games were an untapped market with zero competition, and Christian stores turned out to be the perfect place to sell unlicensed Nintendo games. Although the developers themselves mostly weren't Christians, the company hired salespeople who were.
It was fascinating, reading about how the companies functioned and the kinds of games they made. Although this was mostly focused on Wisdom Tree's games rather than Color Dreams', in some cases they were practically the same thing - some Wisdom Tree games were literally just Color Dreams games with a few tweaks and some bible stuff thrown in. No screenshots for any of it, unfortunately, although I was able to easily find some online (Durham's descriptions of the animal stacking in Bible Adventure's "Noah's Ark" and all the baby Moses stuff in "Baby Moses" were better than the screenshots alone would have been, anyway).
There were moments, especially later in Wisdom Tree's history, that were just wild - at one point, for example, Color Dreams got the Hellraiser movie game rights, prepared for the creation of that game by paying to use Wolfenstein 3D's engine, and then, when the Hellraiser game didn't pan out, squeezed some money out of it all by having Wisdom Tree release Super 3D Noah's Ark, which was essentially Wolfenstein 3D but with a slingshot instead of guns, angry animals instead of Nazis, and fruit instead of bullets.
In addition to the game stuff, I also appreciated Durham's examination of his feelings about faith and belief, and the way Color Dreams founder Dan Lawton's regret about convincing Dan Burke (a Color Dreams developer) to become an atheist mirrored his own feelings about trying to convert other people to Christianity.
All in all, this was a great read.
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