So by this point I think it’s fair to say that most of our readers are aware that I love weird rabbit holes that I can explore. I did so not so long ago when I looked at all of the various World of Warcraft tabletop games that have existed over the years because I thought there were a couple but it turned out that they could fill up an entire list all by themselves. And the thing is that Blizzard is actually kind of in a weird sweet spot insofar as it does actually have a list of games you may have forgotten but not such a huge list that I could do seven articles and never run out of games.
Did I consider doing this for Square-Enix? No. Did you not read the end of the paragraph above? No. Hell no.
Now, despite the attention-getting title, it is possible that you as a savvy reader have not forgotten that these titles existed. Many people have heard of some of these. But I’m willing to bet that most everyone else has forgotten that these titles were ever made by our once-favorite winter-themed company.
1. The Lost Vikings
Technically, this game dates back to the time when Blizzard was still Silicon & Synapse, but it’s still Blizzard. If you’ve never played this game, just know that it’s kind of a basic puzzle platformer by modern standards, but it was released at a time when “puzzle platformer” wasn’t really a genre in the first place, so it’s kind of amazing that there was a time when Blizzard really was just being pretty dang inventive. It’s a boring bugbear to say, “Oh, they’ve always just copied popular things,” but it’s not actually true! Blizzard can be inventive! Or it could be, at least.
2. The Lost Vikings 2
Yep, this one even got a sequel, and this one did have the Blizzard branding. We stopped at two, sadly, but there’s good news; if you really like these games and want something similar, we’ve literally got five Trine games now that have a similar premise. They’re good and worth the entry price! So that one turns out all right.
3. Rock ‘n’ Roll Racing
OK, that’s a kind of potentially weak title, but credit where credit is due: Blizzard did actually pick a number of classic musical tracks that definitely qualify as rock and roll. Or more accurately, a number of uncredited licensed songs that are still familiar. I for some reason always remember this one having Metallica on the list, but no, it’s actually good classic rock here. And the game itself was a pretty fun combat racer, sort of like halfway to a kart racing game where we’d eventually get with games like Mario Kart.
4. RPM Racing
And it turns out this was actually built off of the studio’s first title, RPM Racing, which stands for Radical Psycho Machine Racing, which itself was heavily inspired by EA’s Racing Destruction Set for the Commodore 64. Huh. You know what, remember up when I said The Lost Vikings was a sign that Blizzard really could be pretty dang inventive? Apparently “take something that works and polish it up” was also there from the first days. Dang it, Blizzard.
5. Blackthorne
So Blackthorne was inspired by the rotoscoped “cinematic” games that were getting a lot of buzz around that time, like Another World and Flashback. It had tons of rotoscoped sprites with really smooth animation, running and jumping through platforming sequences. It’s a little more shooter-platforming focused than the mentioned games, which have a greater emphasis on puzzles and inventory management. Also, it stars not-Varian Wrynn fighting against not-Orcs. Yeah, it’s pretty Blizzard.
6. Nomad
The people who were very proud to know all of the titles up until this point are probably now stopping mid-sentence. Nomad was actually a project that was in development prior to the development of WoW, inspired by (but not actually licensing) Games Workshop’s Necromunda tabletop game. A lot of people like to claim that the original Warcraft was inspired by Warhammer Fantasy (it wasn’t, although the art was an influence), but this really was a squad-based shooter that was inspired by Games Workshop. It got canned when WoW development kicked off, though.
7. The Death & Return of Superman
Did you even remember that one of the most maligned big event stories in comic history got turned into a side-scrolling beat-’em-up in the ’90s? No? Well, it did, and it got developed by Blizzard. And it was… uh… no, it actually wasn’t very good. The idea behind it was kind of neat insofar as players took control of the various Supermen who showed up in the middle portion of that particular story and also Superman himself, but basically at its best it was a stock-standard beat-em-up and at worst it was a rather sub-par example of same. Not an all-time classic, then. Thank goodness Blizzard wisely never dipped back into the same –
8. Justice League Task Force
Wait, what? Blizzard actually made a fighting game based on DC superheroes? Since 1995 was an early fighting game peak, you probably aren’t surprised that this game exists, and since this was also the period of time when studios understood the bare minimum of what fighting games were but not how to make them any good, it probably doesn’t shock you that the game isn’t good. But it was made by Blizzard. That’s kind of wild, just like a weird outlier in the developer’s history if you ignore that the studio also made a Superman game. Keep your Injustice games; I’ll be playing the classic Justice League fighting game.
…all right that’s a lie, I won’t be playing it; it’s not actually any good or memorable. But it exists. If you really need to play Superman in a fighting game with a bad ’90s mullet, then this… exists. But you should need better things.
9. Pax Imperia 2
All right, this one is going to take some history. In 1992, Pax Imperia was released for the Macintosh. It was a 4X game in the classic mold and was well received, and thus Blizzard started working with Pax Imperia’s original developers, Changeling Software, to develop the sequel for both Mac and PC players. However, partway through development Blizzard decided to pull out of the project and sold it to THQ, which eventually released Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain as a sequel. It was seen as a fairly middling title as a sort of real-time 4X title, and it would be pretty overshadowed by Blizzard’s own StarCraft released a few months later. C’est la vie.
10. StarCraft II
“Wait, everyone remembers this title exists.” Are you sure? Because Blizzard sure doesn’t!
gottem
Everyone likes a good list, and we are no different! Perfect Ten takes an MMO topic and divvies it up into 10 delicious, entertaining, and often informative segments for your snacking pleasure. Got a good idea for a list? Email us at justin@massivelyop.com or eliot@massivelyop.com with the subject line “Perfect Ten.”
