Spiritual Warfare is a Christian game, although any good Christian will tell you about how Christianity is not about duality, as this game seems to imply. Spiritual Warfare is part of the Wisdom Tree series of games, which were basically a bunch of subpar NES games released in fancy black cartridges designed, I can only assume, to further the faith of children. Spiritual Warfare is by far superior to all of them.

In this game, you play the role of a strapping young lad striving to beat up a demon in order to "[free] the city from his evil influence!" (taken from the credit, no plural). You basically wander around the map, trying to find various items like a Jawbone (i.e. Boomerang), a cool Sword of the Spirit (i.e. Magical Sword), a breastplate (i.e. Blue Ring), a belt (i.e. Power Bracelet), a raft (i.e. Raft), and other items which help you on your quest, and come straight from The Legend of Zelda. I skip most of them, only getting the Belt of Truth (which allows me to leave the Park), the Breastplate of Righteousness (which allows me to enter the Airport), the Boots of Something Forgettable (which allow me to enter the Prison), and the Grapes of Love, which I use to free "the city from his evil influence!"

Despite its flaws and/or blatant plagiarism, in no other game can you kill people with fruit (or at least send them to eternal salvation). Well, Spanky's Quest for the SNES comes close, which allows to kill stuff with basketballs.

Anytime you see me stop or walk too far, I'm trying to manipulate luck. Probably 1100 of the 1300 rerecords were due to me trying to manipulate luck. The rest were me shooting misguided pears and/or grapes.

The Helmet of Salvation (which I don't retrieve) allows you to suffer through explosions without getting hurt. Since there are several places where I have to suffer through an explosion, I needed a way to survive with only three hearts. At first I didn't think it was possible, and thought I would be forced to go out of my way to retrieve some heart containers, which would be quite lame. However, since the game gives you a way to restore your health (through prayer), I discovered that praying would be much faster than obtaining three more heart containers. This meant that I would have to kill more enemies to get "Spirit Points" (which didn't turn out to be as big a problem as I thought).

The explosion in question, right before I enter the Demon's Lair, is the place where I thought I might need more heart containers. Since there are five TNT bundles surrounding me, that means that five hits would register (five full hearts taken off). Since I only had three hearts, I needed a way around that. I found that if you shoot the TNT bundle to the right and immediately move to the right, it is possible to only be hit by three of the TNT bundles. Still not very acceptable considering I only have three hearts. However, a well timed (only a one frame window) prayer meeting solved everything, and I was able to make it to the Demon's Lair without getting any extra heart containers.

That's pretty much the only notable thing about the run; everything else worth saying can be learned from watching.

Enjoy.

Truncated: Up for judging shortly.

Truncated: It seems this game does have its fans. It's well played and shorter than what you would expect if you know the game.

Still, I think we have enough good and outstanding movies to warrant excluding the mediocre ones. It's the game that kills this one, the stupid concept and the everlooping music in particular.

While I was torn, I have discussed it with another judge and the verdict is reject.

adelikat: Accepting for publication to the Vault

Brandon: Publication underway.