Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock this week, you probably heard about a little game called Starcraft 2 that just came out. The original “Warcraft in space” is my all time favorite game, and so I’ve been playing the slick new sequel every spare minute. A few hours into the game, you enter the cantina, and in one corner is a playable old school arcade game. Titled “The Lost Viking”, the game is a very retro, Gradius-like outer space shooter. Long time Blizzard fans will recognzie the title as an easter egg, hearkening back to Blizzard’s first game from way back in 1992, The Lost Vikings.
Back in 1992, if you were a gamer, chances are you had a Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, or an MS-DOS PC. The Lost Vikings was released for each of these three platforms by Interplay, and was developed by Silicon and Synapse, the company which eventually became known as Blizzard. As the game begins, three vikings are abducted in the middle of the night by an alien starship, controlled by Tomator of the Croutonian Empire. They must work together, using their own unique talents, to overcome various traps, enemies, and other obstacles as they attempt to escape Tomator’s plans to place them in an intergalactic zoo.
Erik the Swift is a slim, red-headed Viking, and as you’d expect from his nickname, he’s significantly faster than the other two. Erik can jump great distances, and can head-butt enemies and certain walls, after which he spins around in a daze momentarily. Baleog the Fierce is described as a “stud” in the game, and he live up to his name by wielding his weapons: enemies fall before his sword strikes, and he can shoot arrows to damage foes or activate switches. Last, but not least (as far as girth goes) is Olaf the Stout. Olaf’s shield is indestructible, and can also be used as a makeshift hang glider, or held on top of Olaf’s head to allow Erik a platform to jump onto to reach tall areas.
The Norse trio fight their way through a series of clever levels designed to take advantage of their abilities. The spaceship itself provides the first challenge, and then the Vikings are sent through time back to Prehistoria. After battling cavemen, they find a portal to ancient Egypt, which is full of mummies and scorpions, naturally. Next on the list is a Factory, full of industrialized terrors, and then we come to a stage known as “Wacky”, which is about as trippy and odd a level as you’ll find. Finally, it’s back to the spaceship for a final showdown with Tomator. As you can tell, the levels are creative, and have a totally different feel from one another. All the attention to detail that Blizzard would become famous for is evident in The Lost Vikings.
You may be wondering where to co-op comes in. It’s a bit different than you might expect. In single player mode, you control one Viking at a time, and switch back and forth as needed in order to advance. In two player mode, two of the three Vikings can move at the same time, each controlled by a different player. Control of each individual Viking can be swapped on the fly as needed. It takes a bit of getting used to, and it seems that playing together makes some puzzles easier and others can be a bit more difficult to coordinate. Communication is the key here, as it is in so many other highly cooperative games.
Another hallmark of Blizzard games is comedic elements. The Lost Vikings is no exception, and from the very beginning, the bickering and other interactions between the Vikings will put a smile on your face. Perhaps the funniest schtick is when the Vikings discuss the players’ failures to complete a level when they respawn. At first, they complain of deja vu, then of being too tired of the scenery, and finally they address the player directly, and accuse them of having too much time on their hands. It’s quite fun and helps to alleviate the frustration of failure a little bit. A compilation of these little conversations is available on Youtube and definitely worth your time to view.
The Lost Vikings is among the most popular games from its time, and fondly remembered by many a 16-bit era gamer. Part of this fame is likely due to the Blizzard pedigree, but it’s an excellent game, regardless, and holds up very well to this day. You can see the influence of The Lost Vikings in many games, perhaps none so much as Trine, which you’ll recall we are pretty fond of here at Co-Optimus. Many of the things that make co-op Trine so great are found in this venerable 1992 classic puzzle platformer: clearly defined character roles, light fighting elements, smart platforming, and most especially teamwork.
The Lost Vikings was ported to many different systems, and was followed by a sequel, which itself was remade and enhanced for 32-bit systems. (Hopefully, we’ll take a closer look at these sequels in a future Co-Op Classics column.) In 2003, a Game Boy Advance port of the SNES version was released. Erik, Baleog, and Olaf have turned up in cameo roles in several other Blizzard games, most notably another game you might possibly have heard of before called World of Warcraft. It’s clear that Blizzard looks back on these three Viking stooges with fondness, and any fan of Co-Op Classics likely shares this same sentiment.