As part of Blizzard’s 30th anniversary, the company famous for Diablo, World of Warcraft and Overwatch has released a collection of three of its earliest games, from a time before live services and loot boxes; The Lost Vikings, Rock N’ Roll Racing and Blackthorne.

And while these three games have been available for free in their most basic form through Blizzard’s website for some time, Blizzard Arcade Collection is anything but a quick cash in. Co-developed by preservation experts Digital Eclipse, it’s a rich and loving tribute to three ’90s gems you don’t often see revisited, filled with thoughtful additions and interesting historical context.

For starters there are three versions of each game included; the one originally released on Super Nintendo, the one originally released on Sega systems and a newly modernised Definitive Edition debuting here for the first time. The retro games get some helpful features like save states, the ability to rewind, and various options for video filters and scaling, making them more palatable in 2021.

Meanwhile the Definitive Editions come super close to being the undisputed best way to play each game, and impressively have all been translated to several more languages so a global audience can enjoy them, but there were evidently a few technical and legal hoops too costly for Blizzard to jump through.

Rock N’ Roll Racing is a solid sci-fi arcade racer famous in its day for a soundtrack featuring MIDI versions of tracks from the likes of Deep Purple and Steppenwolf. The free game Blizzard gives out is simply the Super Nintendo version with all the songs removed, presumably because of the cost of renewing licensing agreements, but here the company has opened up its wallet to let you play either ’90s version with (almost) all the head-bopping chiptune covers of old rock songs in-tact. The one very unfortunate exception is Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, which is nowhere to be found.

As with all three games the Sega adaptation looks and sounds worse — though it’s nice to have for fans who remember that version — but the Definitive Edition of Racing is the most impressive of the whole package. It has heaps of new and freshly recorded lines of commentary, modernised graphics with new backgrounds and widescreen presentation, plus CD-quality studio recordings of the original songs. Paranoid is still missing, but this version makes up for it with Judas Preists’ Breaking the Law and Rush’s Red Barchetta.

Of course being able to listen to Bad to the Bone or Radar Love whenever you want isn’t exactly a selling point if you have a Spotify subscription, but luckily the game itself has held up nicely with tight controls and an amusing array of weapons and tracks. The original multiplayer still works, or you can play the Definitive Edition in up to four-player splitscreen.

The Lost Vikings is the oldest and most antiquated of the lot, but is fondly remembered and was ahead of its time in many ways. The three protagonists — Vikings who are abducted by aliens and find themselves in situations very much outside their comfort zone — each have distinct capabilities, and you need to utilise all three to solve puzzles and find your way home. The save and rewind features really come into their own here, as it’s easy to make a mistake and completely lock yourself out from being able to complete a given stage.