[Review] Lost Vikings SNES

[Warlock-]

 

Long before Blizzard had an empire; back before they could shut down to city in Korea with a mere trailer; before there was even a Warcraft, let alone a world, there was Silicon & Synapse. The small, independent studio snuck up on us seemingly from nowhere with one of the best puzzle games the Super Nintendo would see. No one really knew what to make of The Lost Vikings, but it was clear that these guys were on something. At a glance, this seems to be a typical platform like the many that littered the SNES and Genesis back in the early '90s. Sure, the premise is interesting enough to make it stand out: A small party of Vikings is abducted by an alien emperor building to menagerie, and the three Norsemen escape and battle through time and space to get home. But this is not really the platformer it is disguised as. It is much closer to The Humans, a puzzle game that had just hit Amiga computers a few months earlier. You can rotate between the different characters, and it is only through using each of their unique abilities that you can reach the end. They are not very complete characters on their own. Erik the Swift can run, jump, and smash with his head, but without any means of attack, he makes for easy prey.

Baleog the Fierce can shoot arrows swing his sword, but with no jumping ability, there are a lot of areas he can not go. Olaf the Stout rounds out the party, carrying a giant shield that block shots or make for a makeshift platform. It's only through working together that anything is possible. The design is not completely revolutionary, but it is certainly different, and unlike The Humans, it is able to preserve the playability and pacing of an action game, while keeping the challenge squarely focused on puzzling. Execution is rarely the issue. If you know how to beat a level, it was just a matter of keeping your plan straight. Organizing your movements can be a challenge, but your reflexes are seldom tried. It helped that the trio have a personality too. The colorful style and far-out story of a lot to sell gamers in this world, and the variety of outlandish settings, ranging from ancient Egypt to alien worlds, makes you really want to see what was in store next. Unfortunately the forced jokes and tired quips between stages are not nearly as entertaining as I remembered them, but the slapstick quality of the animation is even better. Even the soundtrack is oddly anachronistic, with a cheesy hip-hop infused theme, and more funk than should be allowed in a game with a main character named Olaf.

Last November at Blizzcon it was announced there would be a new unit for the upcoming Heroes of the Storm MOBA. Their names are Baleog, Olaf, and Erik the Swift. For newer Blizzard fans, these characters may be unknown, but for those of growing up in the 16-bit era these characters are collectively known as The Lost Vikings.

The Lost Vikings was the one of the first original titles developed by Blizzard, then called Silicon & Synapse. The game is described as a puzzle / platformer title but that does not quite describe the gameplay. You play as all three vikings each with a unique ability. Baleog can attack each enemy with a sword and bow, Olaf has a shield to defend from attacks and slow your fall, and Erik the swift can fast, jump, and smash certain walls with his head. Each section of the levels requires you to use each viking's ability to get to and from point A to point B. You can switch between each viking with the L and R buttons, and in order to finish the level you need to get all three vikings to the exit The story has a level of depth literature fanatics will go bananas over. One day all three of the vikings were out hunting and then aliens came along and captured them to put them on their species display. The aliens, or "Croutonians," do a terrible job keeping the vikings in their ship and you warp around from world to world trying to get home.

The level design has a bit of variety to it. You'll fight cavemen, dinosaurs, pharaohs, scorpions, and more through caves, pyramids, volcanoes, spaceships, and other odd places for Norsemen. Each level is basically just different colored platforms but you'll climb trees, ladders, and even inflate your vikings to get past some of the sections. The Lost Vikings requires a level of patience beyond what you would expect from a 16-bit era platformer. It has a dynamic I'm surprised it was not used much in games to follow. The only other game I can compare it to the Mario Bros foot game in Game & Watch Gallery 3 for Game Boy Color. It's a silly comparison considering that it was basically Tapper if you had two bartenders.

I did not remember how well I did renting this as a kid, but I'm guessing I did not get anywhere near as far as I did this play through. The game requires a lot of trial and error to figure out the puzzles and even the platforming works that way in the later levels. There's no way to look through the entirety of the level so each section went something like this: Move Olaf the shield guy forward, move everyone else to a little bit, kill the enemies, run into a section you can not see past, die, realize how you were supposed to do it, start over and try again. It's extra frustrating because for some reason the level does not end when one of your vikings dies, but if you reach the end of the level with one or two of them left you end up at the continue screen anyway. During the pyramid levels you climb trees to get across quicksand. I did not know this, however, I spent a few long-winded attempts by using Erik the jumping Norwegian to try and find the item or bridge to unlock. Eventually, I figured out the climbing thing. You can get to the top of the tree and simply move forward to land across the quicksand ... theoretically. This did not work the first few tries and I eventually figured it out by chance. Basically, if you mess up even a little you have to start all over and it takes a lot of deep breaths to move forward.

The Lost Vikings makes up for its frustration with a lot of ambition. For the limitations presented by that era it certainly set itself apart. The puzzles are more challenging to execute than to figure out which is somehow rewarding. Racking your brain is one thing and hacking and slashing is another. This settles in its own comfort zone where you're not doing too much of either. The Lost Vikings has a lot of personality but it feels pretty dated. It's like a streamlined version of Lemmings if Lemmings took elements from Ghouls and Ghosts. There are tons of levels to play through and the passwords are simple enough that you can remember them and get back to where you were. I played the game on the SNES but if you can hunt it down the Sega Genesis version has five more levels. The Lost Vikings can be a lot of fun and will definitely show you how Blizzard became known for their world-building and strategy games. The visuals are charming in a cartoony sense and the music is great despite being one track per world. It would take a bit of nostalgia to really want to play through this title but considering it's free on Battle.net now you can check out a great start to a legendary developer.

 

The Verdict

 

The Lost Vikings did not break the rules, and it did not open the floodgates for waves of imitators. It was not the high-water mark for a budding genre, and it did not set new sales records. There's no denying that Blizzard went on to bigger, better, and more important things, and it's not surprising that they've left the Vikings far behind them. Still, this was the moment when we stood up and took notice; where Blizzard came into their own. It is smart, stylish, and different, and those are the same qualities we still look for today.

 

 

 

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