The Lost Vikings (1993)
The Lost Vikings is a 1993 platform video game made by Silicon & Synapse and T&E Soft.
Three Vikings, Erik, Baleog, and Olaf, are abducted by an alien named Tomator and scattered across history. Each carries a distinct set of abilities: Erik sprints and headbutts through obstacles, Baleog cuts enemies down with sword or bow, and Olaf holds his shield overhead to block projectiles and glide on the wind. Silicon & Synapse's 1993 puzzle-platform game requires all three to reach the exit of each level, which means switching between them constantly, managing their positions, and finding the right combination of moves. The tone is breezy and self-aware, the puzzles unforgiving in a way that makes solutions satisfying.
Quick answers
What is The Lost Vikings about?
Three Vikings, Erik, Baleog, and Olaf, are abducted by an alien named Tomator and scattered across history. Each carries a distinct set of abilities: Erik sprints and headbutts through obstacles, Baleog cuts enemies down with sword or bow, and Olaf holds his shield overhead to block projectiles and glide on the wind. Silicon & Synapse's 1993 puzzle-platform game requires all three to reach the exit of each level, which means switching between them constantly, managing their positions, and finding the right combination of moves. The tone is breezy and self-aware, the puzzles unforgiving in a way that makes solutions satisfying.
When was The Lost Vikings released?
The Lost Vikings was released on 29 April 1993.
Who made The Lost Vikings?
The Lost Vikings was made by Silicon & Synapse, T&E Soft and Interplay Entertainment.
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- Companion guide: Blizzard Entertainment: StarCraft, Diablo, Warcraft and the Art of Polish
- Companion guide: Interplay: By Gamers, For Gamers, and the Golden Age of the RPG
A few thoughts on The Lost Vikings
The Viking mythology these three adventurers riff on gets a more earnest treatment in Viking blood, which inhabits the same longship-and-saga world that gave Baleog his axe. For puzzle-platform design built around switching between characters with complementary abilities, Portal 2 extends the same cooperative logic into a full narrative, where two characters whose tools only solve levels when used in tandem.
Time-travel stories about landing in an era you don't belong in
An alien scatters Erik, Baleog, and Olaf across history in The Lost Vikings, and these stories run on that same disorientation of waking up somewhere wrong. The Time Traveler's Wife strands its characters in decades they never chose, Inuyasha drags a modern girl into feudal Japan through a cursed well, and Project Hail Mary sends its narrator into deep space with no memory of how he got there.
Legendary warriors reimagined through myth and epic combat
The Lost Vikings turns three abducted Norsemen into platform heroes, and these pick up the same thread of myth-soaked combat. Viking Blood goes to the source with real Norse raiders, God of War rebuilds Kratos as a grieving father inside Norse mythology, The Song of Achilles retells Greek legend's most famous warrior bond, and King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King sets that same myth to prog rock.
Absurdist comedy that never takes its own premise seriously
The Lost Vikings never stops winking at its own ridiculous setup, three Norsemen bumbling through history because an alien grabbed them by mistake, and these share that same refusal to play it straight. The Simpsons has built three decades on the same shrug, Scary Movie parodies genre convention outright, Tenacious D turns rock mythology into a punchline, and Crayon Shin-chan finds chaos in the most mundane suburban routines.