In celebration of their thirtieth year, Blizzard announced today that they are releasing three of their oldest games again: Rock N Roll Racing, The Lost Vikings and Blackthorne. It’s a bit of a hit in the Blizzard Arcade collection, with features that include backwash and extra levels, plus a ‘museum’ of old development assets and interviews. It is now available on PC, but currently only if you buy Blizzard’s large bundle of BlizzCon treats.
The collection includes the three games in their original versions, as well as the newer new Definitive Editions. With the Lost Vikings and Blackthrone you can save anywhere, as well as a ‘watch mode’ that allows players to watch playthroughs and then jump and take control whenever they want. And they’re all rounded up with collections of “game art, development assets, unused content, information, interviews, and more.”
The Lost Vikings from 1992 is a puzzle platformer with three stocky boys who have to combine their different abilities. The Def Ed is a blend of the different console versions, says Blizzard, “which combines the superior audio and visual experience of the first version with the extra stages and tracks, and support for up to three players in local collaboration, which added is in a future release. “/ p>
Rock N ‘Roll Racing is a top-down killer car game, first released in 1993. The Def Ed adopts 16: 9 resolution, bumps the split-screen multiplayer score from two to four, adds snow and rain, jumps into extra tracks, slides into ‘actual recordings’ of songs from the soundtrack, and also new songs and voice clips.
And Blackthorne from 1994 is a shooting-like Flashback-like, platform-like player. Can’t say I know the one. His Def Ed adds an area that is only seen in the 32-bit version, and a map that fills in as you explore.
I honestly do not have many memories of this – are you in the mood for a revisit, gang?
The Blizzard Arcade Collection is currently only available exclusively on PC as part of Blizzard’s Celebration Collection, a bunch of doodads for many of their games, starting at £ 16.79. You would hope that they will also sell it separately? They already sell it separately on Switch, PlayStation and Xbox.