The Lost Vikings

1993 · Platform / Puzzle · SNES

Overview

The Lost Vikings (1993) is the puzzle-platformer from Silicon & Synapse, later Blizzard, in which the player switches between three Vikings with different abilities to escape an alien zoo.

Deep Dive

Tomator, emperor of the alien Croutonians, kidnaps three Vikings for an intergalactic zoo. They escape but are scattered across time. The player switches between them: Erik the Swift runs, jumps and smashes some walls with his helmet, Baleog the Fierce fights with sword and bow, and Olaf the Stout blocks with his shield, glides on it and serves as a platform. Each Viking has three hit points, and losing one makes the level impossible to finish. The game has 37 levels, or 42 on the Mega Drive.

Developer Story

Silicon & Synapse developed the game and Interplay released it for the Super NES in April 1993, followed by Amiga and MS-DOS versions the same year. The Lost Vikings 2 followed in 1997.

Did You Know?

It started out inspired by Lemmings, and the planned hundreds of tiny Vikings shrank to five and then three.
The Vikings later became playable heroes in Heroes of the Storm.