Thursday, October 12, 2006

Games #5

Today I'm going to present you a cult classic from "Blizzard". Yup, they certainly have delivered some of the most successful games in the history. But I've never been a StarCraft/WarCraft fan, neither single nor multiplayer. So let's go back to 1992, when

"The Lost Vikings"


came out. Now, that's a game I cam play anytime! The story begins with a short presentation of our heroes - three courageous vikings are hunting in the snow covered woods near their village. Each one of them has unique skills - Erik The Swift can run faster than the other two, can jump, and can bash through some walls (and even some enemies) with his helmet; Baleog The Fierce can kill enemies with his sword, or from a distance with his bow (and infinite supply of arrows). The bow can also be used to hit switches from a distance; Olaf The Swift can block enemies and their projectiles with his shield, use his shield as a hang glider, or as a stepping stone for Erik to enable him to reach high grounds which is not possible without the shield. They get back from the hunt, go their houses and their families, night falls... and a huge alien spaceship emerges above their home village!!! Soon the three friends find themselves kidnaped by the intergalactic evil-doer Tomator, who intends to put them behind bars in his zoo! Well, our guys don't give up so easy and your work in the first levels is to help them get free. Finally they manage to escape through some kind of a warp, which happens to be not just an ordinary warp, but a time warp... and here we are, our vikings are lost in time! And chased by aliens. Various worlds with great level designs (prehistoric, ancient Egypt, and so on), through each one of the levels you have the funny dialogue between the characters and the groovy background music to keep you entertained even when you think what to do. Because there's alot of thinking! Usually there is only one possible way to reach the end of the level (and get the password, cause back then we had no save game) and in order to succeed you had to combine the vikings' skills in various ways, swich between them in the right moment...


Some years later there was "The Lost Vikings II", developed by Interplay. There were some new characters - a dragon ad a werevolf, who helped from time to time. And the vikigs got some cybernetic boosters (hehe, Baleog even got a lightsaber!). But all in all the concept of the game remained the same.

Throughout the years the games have been released for PC and various consoles, and in 2003 a GBA version came out. So in case you wanna try 'em out - just search around the net, they are easy to find for DOS and like roms with different emulators.

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