Lost Vikings

The Lost Vikings arrived in 1992 as one of the first games from the young studio Silicon & Synapse, soon to become Blizzard Entertainment. It took the platformer and turned it into a brain-teaser: instead of one nimble hero, you control three shipwrecked Vikings abducted by the alien overlord Tomator, each with his own limited abilities. Erik the Swift runs, jumps and headbutts walls; Baleog the Fierce swings a sword and fires arrows; and Olaf the Stout carries a shield he can raise overhead as a platform or hold in front as a moving wall. None of them can survive alone, so every screen becomes a coordination puzzle.

The clever twist is that you must guide all three to the exit together, switching between them constantly. Baleog clears the guards, Olaf shields the party from falling debris, Erik smashes a blocked passage. Levels wind through a spaceship, prehistoric jungles, ancient Egypt and a candy-coloured factory, each introducing switches, teleporters and conveyor belts that force you to think several moves ahead. The pixel art is chunky and expressive, and the trio's constant bickering gives the whole thing a light comic tone that undercuts the difficulty.

What makes it hold up is that it is essentially a logic game wearing a platformer's clothes. There is very little twitch reflex involved; death usually comes from a mistimed plan rather than a missed jump. That makes it approachable now, especially in co-op where friends can each take a Viking. It is easy to see the seeds of Blizzard's later polish here: tight design, personality, and a willingness to bend a genre rather than copy it.