The Lost Vikings was developed for the SNES by Silicon & Synapse (who now goes by the name Blizzard Entertainment) and published by Interplay in 1993. While the SNES version is the original version of this game, it would later be ported for MS-DOS, Amiga, Amiga CD32 and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. There was also a release for the Game Boy Advance in 2003.
The story of this game is that the three Vikings get kidnapped by Tomator who wants to put them in his intergalactic zoo. The Vikings has to escape the ship and travel through different time periods before defeating Tomator and finding their way home.
At first glance, The Lost Vikings might look like a typical platform game, but this is far from the truth. In fact, it is more of a puzzle game at its core, with some platforming elements. You control three different Vikings, namely Erik the Swift, Baleog the Fierce and Olaf the Stout. You can only control one at a time but must constantly switch between them. It is possible to play the game with two players, which would mean less switching, but even then it would still be necessary.
However, all Vikings have their own abilities that you must take advantage of to solve the puzzle. Erik is faster than the other Vikings, can do a head-butt attack to take down certain walls and enemies and is also the only character who can jump. Baleog can use his sword as well as his bow and arrow to take out enemies and hit switches you otherwise couldn’t reach. Olaf has his shield which will block any enemy projectiles. His shield can also be used as a platform, and he can also use the shield to glide through the air. Mastering all of these abilities and knowing when to use which Viking is key to succeeding to the game. In the levels there are also certain items you can find that are either mandatory to progress, such as keys and bombs, or that are just helpful such as food that restores health and a clear-screen bomb.
There’s 37 levels to play through, and the game is fairly long. It personally took me more than 7 hours to beat it, but if you know the game and get everything right the first time, you could probably beat it in 2-3 hours judging by the length YouTube longplays. You get a password for each level and the password is only 4 letters long.
While you get unlimited tries, there’s no checkpoints in the levels, which can be extremely frustrating once you get to the later levels which can be really long at times. Most levels are fairly short, but some can seem a bit overwhelming at first glance.
Your Vikings do get a health bar, although there are some things which will instantly kill them, and you can also get stuck in places where you can’t progress from. You also take damage from jumping from a too great height. If one of the Vikings dies, the level doesn’t end, and you could technically finish it, but in order to progress to the next level you need to reach the exit with all three Vikings. This might seem annoying but it does give you the opportunity to explore the level a bit so you know what you have to do differently next time.
As for the difficulty, there is a lot of trial and error involved. Once you know what must be done, it does get quite easy, but the lack of checkpoints in the longer levels can make a simple mistake brutal. There’s also certain things you have to do that are quite unintuitive. I often got stuck in levels and consulted a YouTube walkthrough in order to figure out what I was missing. Rather than an “of course”, my reaction was more often than not “I could do that?”, which could certainly be quite frustrating at times. Otherwise, once you figure out the puzzles, the game gets fairly easy, but it can be tedious at times with certain tasks you have to do.
There is some funny writing involved, often breaking the fourth wall, but I don’t really think it is funny enough to make the game worth playing on the humour alone.
Graphically, the game looks quite good for its time and the graphics have aged fairly well. The music is unique to say the least. I personally find it awesome, but it does sound quite different from most other SNES games I have played. In fact the music sounds more like something you would expect from an Amiga game.
Overall, The Lost Vikings is a unique concept to say the least, I can’t really think of any other game that plays similarly to it. I personally don’t find it a great game, but it is decent. The puzzles can be fun to figure out, but some of them just feel very unintuitive, and there were certain sections where the game felt quite tedious. The final level where you end up fighting Tomator was really fun though.
Is it worth Playing?
This really depends, since this game is not for everyone. It requires some patience, and if you expect an action-platformer, this is not a game for you. This is mainly a game for people who like to figure out puzzles. While there is some basic platforming involved, it is a puzzle game at its core. I would imagine that you will like this game if you like the Adventures of Lolo series for the NES, even if they play quite differently, they are similar in the way that both games are puzzle game with some action elements.
Final score: 7/10
Screenshots via MobyGames: http://www.mobygames.com
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