Blizzard makes classics The Lost Vikings and Rock ‘n Roll Racing available

Blizzard has put Windows versions of classics The Lost Vikings, Rock ‘n Roll Racing and Blackthorne online. The three games from the early 90s are free to download. All you need is a free account to play the games.

Without prior notice, Blizzard appears to be offering three of its oldest games for free via Battle.net, the studio’s own portal. Anyone who has a Battle.net account can download the three games. The Lost Vikings and Rock ‘n Roll Racing are only available for Windows, Blackthorne also runs on OS X.

The three games date from the early days of the studio, which started in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse. That same year, the studio delivered its first game; RPM Racing for the SNES. 1992’s The Lost Vikings is the studio’s second game and has been released for SNES, Amiga, GBA, Genesis, and MS-DOS. A year later, Rock ‘n Roll Racing appeared, again for SNES, Genesis and GBA, but not for MS-DOS. Only after that would the studio take the name Blizzard Entertainment. The first game it released under that name was Blackthorne, which came out in 1994 for SNES, GBA, MS-DOS, and Mac OS. According to fan site BlizzPro, Rock ‘n Roll Racing is a stripped-down version of the game, with just three tracks and some of the original music. It’s not clear if Blizzard plans to release the rest of the game as well.

Blizzard didn’t have the fame it has now. The great successes with games like Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft were yet to come. The gameplay of the three classics also differs considerably from the games with which Blizzard would achieve great success. For example, The Lost Vikings is a 2d side-scroller, Rock ‘n Roll Racing is a 2d racing game in which drivers could use weapons to knock competitors off the track and Blackthorne is a 2d platform game.

Update, 14:15: The games can now also be downloaded without a Battle.net account.