The Lost Vikings

The Lost Vikings is a 1993 puzzle-platform game developed by Silicon & Synapse (now Blizzard Entertainment) and published by Interplay Productions. In the game, the player controls three separate vikings with different abilities. The three vikings must work together to finish each level and find their way back home.

The game was initially released for the Super NES, then subsequently released for the Amiga, Amiga CD32, MS-DOS, and Mega Drive/Genesis. A sequel, The Lost Vikings 2, was released in 1997.

Blizzard re-released The Lost Vikings for the Game Boy Advance in 2003 and for Battle.net in 2014. In 2021, the game was re-released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One as part of the Blizzard Arcade Collection.

Three Vikings (Erik the Swift, Baleog the Fierce, and Olaf the Stout) get kidnapped by Tomator, emperor of the alien Croutonian empire, for an inter-galactic zoo. They are able to escape the ship, but get lost in various periods of time. They must traverse various bizarre locations, and eventually confront and defeat Tomator, to find their way home.

The Lost Vikings is a side-scrolling platform adventure where the player alternates control of the three Viking characters, guiding each of them one at a time (though control may be swapped from character to character at any point) from a designated start point to the exit. The Mega Drive/Genesis version of the game offers a two-player cooperative mode in which each player simultaneously controls one Viking and is allowed to change control to the third, unused Viking at any point. Every level is designed so that each Viking must contribute his unique skills to help the other two through to the end. Similarly, to finish the level, all three characters must reach the exit point. Every Viking has three health points that can be lost by getting hurt by enemies or by falling from great heights. Any Viking that runs out of health points will die. Gameplay will then continue with the remaining Vikings, but the level becomes unwinnable, and the player will eventually have to restart and try again. However, the game offers unlimited continues.

Each Viking has the ability to carry and use items such as keys, bombs, and food (that restores health points). These items can also be swapped between characters as long as they are close to each other. Each Viking also has a unique set of skills: