Blizzard Arcade Collection gets two more 1990s SNES hits, free

Two more throwbacks have joined the Blizzard Arcade Collection anthology that launched for PC and consoles back in February. They are The Lost Vikings 2, a sequel to the side-scrolling platformer included with the collection at launch, and RPM Racing, an isometric-style truck racer similar to the also-included Rock N Roll Racing.

The new games were added to the Blizzard Arcade Collection via free update on Tuesday. Blizzard Arcade Collection, a compilation of hits from the company’s earliest days (when it was known as Silicon & Synapse, and then Chaos Studios), launched in February on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One. The anthology is a celebration of the publisher/studio’s 30th anniversary.

RPM Racing, which launched for Super Nintendo in 1991, was the predecessor to Rock N Roll Racing. Blizzard made Lost Vikings 2: Norse by Norse West for SNES in 1997. Fun fact: Obsidian Entertainment chief executive Feargus Urquhart, then at Interplay Productions, was a producer on that game (Interplay published it).

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• Image: Blizzard Entertainment
• Image: Blizzard Entertainment
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• Image: Blizzard Entertainment
• Image: Blizzard Entertainment
• Image: Blizzard Entertainment

Tuesday’s patch also delivers a Design Documents Gallery to Blizzard Arcade Collection’s Museum mode. A news release from Blizzard said the gallery charts the five games’ progress from concept to completion.

And, interestingly, Blizzard is also adding a “Streamer Mode” to Rock N Roll Racing that gets around the Twitch hall monitors for music rights. It allows streamers to play MIDI versions of the game’s six-song soundtrack (Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” while Loudmouth Larry screamed “Holy Toledo!” during a wipeout, was always a high point of the action.)

The two Lost Viking games and two racing titles are joined by Blackthorne, a 1994 SNES platformer whose cover/cartridge art was drawn by, of all people, DC Comics publisher Jim Lee.