Up until last year, I was quite the videogamer. I’m not embarrassed to admit it. I used to belong to a Call of Duty clan. I’m actually a little proud of that, in fact. I preordered Call of Duty 4 for PC. Of course, a PC that was able to keep up with CoD4 when it was new is no longer able to do bupkis for modern games.
But I digress, this isn’t about my lack of computing power, this is about my search for a Jewish Videogame.
There aren’t any big-budget Jewish videogames, as I discovered. Now, I know what your thinking, “Hey, there aren’t a lot of Christian videogames either!” but you’re wrong. Dante’s Inferno just came out, for one. So that’s Catholicism down. And don’t forget the videogame adaptations of Left Behind. Another good one is Painkiller where your job is fight the minions of Hell. Pretty much any one of those games where there’s a good deity fighting a bad deity and the main character is a Christ figure is a sort of Christian game (although, to be fair, almost everyone in any story is a Christ figure. Moses was a Christ figure).
So, I went to Google (which, as you may have read from some of our other posts, is the preeminent internet authority on all things Jewish) and just typed in “Jewish Videogames.” This is what I found on literally the first result:
They're allowed to make Mitzvah Man, because all of Atari's lawyers are Jewish
This comes from Judaism.com (motto: The Jewish Search Starts Here!). There are actually seven Jewish videogames, not just the six shown here. Unfortunately, my screenshot utility cut off Wisecrackers! The Interactive Jewish Trivia Game. I’m very sorry. It was also the cheapest game, priced at $19.95. I think it’s worth pointing out something about these prices, namely: they’re unreasonable. I’m sorry, but “Torah Targets” is clearly an Asteroids clone, which is marked down twenty dollars. It costs $50.00 to make Asteroids Jewish? What are you, crazy?
I also dig that Ehud’s Courage and the Cunning Blade is “THE Jewish software game of the year!” Now, if you haven’t heard of Ehud before, well, get ready, because it’s a pretty wicked story. Basically, Ehud is an Israelite (and ipso facto Jewish) who has to pay off the Moabite King, but rather than doing so, he assassinates the king instead. Sounds awesome, right? Like a Biblical Assassin’s Creed. Well, here are the “Game Highlights” as listed on Judaism.com:
- Use strategy and maps to plan your course of action
- Superb full-screen graphics and animation
- Challenging puzzles and clues
- Explore the ancient world of Biblical Israel
- Easy to use point and click interface
- For ages 12 through adult.
Strategy? Maps? Puzzles? This is a story about a guy straight up stabbing another guy. Ehud didn’t have to solve puzzles to kill anyone, he just did it. They really show what a suck-fest Ehud is with highlights like “Superb full-screen graphics” (that stopped being a selling point at least 10 years ago) and “For ages 12 through adult.” See, in entertainment, things that they say are made for twelve year olds are actually made for eight year olds. And it’s too bad, frankly, because Ehud seems like a good story for a videogame.
Frankly, I think there’s a ton of rich backstory to mine for videogaming to be found in the Jewish religion. Most of the Jewish Bible involves war, and where it’s not war, it’s generally people getting killed in creative ways. They could do a Diablo-clone or a real-time strategy game. Or even an FPS. Do David vs Goliath. Give the player a slingshot and have him go to town. It’d be awesome.
