Enix Made An NES Game Where Jesus Was A Space Station

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The storied Japanese developer Enix, best known for its slime-mascot Dragon Quest series, released a video game called Jesus in the late 1980s, but few would guess what the game was really about based on its name. The game’s full Japanese title translates to Jesus: The Terrifying Bio-Monster, but the actual content of the game is less sacrilegious than it sounds. Jesus was initially released on a variety of Japanese home computers before its final port to Nintendo’s Famicom in 1989. The NES had several unlicensed religious games released in the West, like Bible Adventures and Spiritual Warfare, but Enix’s Jesus was a far cry from any of those. The game was a science fiction graphic adventure, a precursor to modern visual novels, following the crew of Space Lab Jesus as they investigate Halley’s Comet during its approach close to the Earth. There are new NES and SNES games coming to Switch Online regularly, but Jesus will almost certainly not be one of them, as it has never been officially released outside of Japan.

The 8-bit Jesus game takes place in 2061, and it featured a largely optimistic vision of the future, where an international crew gathers to study the gasses emitted by Halley’s Comet during its closest orbit to the Earth. The fact that the Space Lab is named after the Christian savior figure is not a major aspect of the story, despite it forming the game’s title. It is unclear if Jesus: The Terrifying Bio-Monster was intended to catch people’s attention through the shock value of its title, or if it is simply a case of cultural differences. Regardless, the aesthetic of Jesus is more inspired by the anime and manga of the ‘80s than any religious works. The Famicom port, which more Western gamers have played