back to article Lemmings

Lemmings was developed by DMA who are now known as Rockstar North of Grand Theft Auto fame. Who’d a thought such innocent beginnings would lead to such depraved offspring? DMA Design Lemmings Multiformat title: to begin with only multiplayer on the Amiga Originally released on the Commodore Amiga, Lemmings was one of the …

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  1. Thomas 18
    Joke

    AI in game is terrible

    The AI of units in this game is terrible,they just walk right off cliffs and other environmental hazards like they don't even see them.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      AI...

      They're Lemmings, who are prone to do such things!

      1. Sooty
        Headmaster

        Unless Disney employees are herding them off cliffs, lemmings aren't particularly prone to suicidal behaviour.

    2. Thomas 4
      Joke

      @Thomas 18

      Don't even get me started on the pathing issues.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      If you've played resi5.

      Then you could argue that things haven't improved much over the years.

  2. Chris Holt
    Thumb Up

    DHTML Lemmings

    No need for an Amiga ... www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/

    I'm sure most people here know that already though...

    1. Milkfloat

      My company hates you now. Personally, I love you.

    2. 27escape
      Joke

      all follow the link

      well, like lemmings

      1. Ragarath

        Not authentic

        Sorry but that game is to easy to cheat on. All you have to do is hold down on the scroll bar and they all stop, shame.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Boffin

          @Ragarath

          Or, if you want to be really retro and unoriginal, the pause button....?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I think I played it too much

      Right now I'm on a half-done Gentoo system that doesn't have sound working yet, and I can still hear it in my head.

  3. TakeTheSkyRoad
    Thumb Up

    Ok so how many people dug a pit to trap them all before suiciding them ? ;)

    Awesome game but did get hard towards the end.

    Plus this was back in the day when few people had the internet so no falling back to google and youtube for guides... if you were lucky there was a mag guide or your mates knew what to do.

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Devil

      RE: TakeTheSkyRoad

      I always thought they could have had a really successful sequel if they'd called it "Anti-Lemmings", with the object of the game being to stop any lemmings escaping by using their "skills" to guide them to their doom in the quickest time possible! After wasting many an hour trying to save the ungrateful and unco-operative little b*ggers, I would quite happilly have spent a few deliberately leading them to their death.

  4. Kirstian K

    Thanks for the memory

    i loved this game, reading your review was a real blast from the past... thankyou.

  5. Studley

    The SNES version is incredibly underrated.

    The SNES version featured a split-screen multiplayer mode, featuring two teams of Lemmings (a blue team and a green team IIRC) each with their own exit. The twist was that you could use your own Lemmings to guide your buddy's Lemmings into your own exit, and they count towards your own tally.

    It's also immensely satisfying to detonate a bomber over one of your friend's bridges without them realising, their first indication being the sound of their little critters squishing off-screen...

    Immensely addicting, and up there with my favourite multiplayer experiences of all-time (on a par with Goldeneye 64).

    1. ttkaminski

      "Clones" has multiplayer

      If you liked Lemmings, then you'll definitely like Clones. Clones is an indie game made by a couple of guys and the game was released last year. It features internet multiplayer (which is fantastically fun) and ton of singleplayer levels. One awesome feature that this game has that Lemmings never had is saving checkpoints (so you don't have to play the level from the beginning each time you fail). Clones is like lemmings on steroids!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh yes. An all time classic, even when it moved on to the playstation so you could play against your uni mates in halls....

  7. dotdavid
    Pint

    Two player lemmings

    "But only the Amiga had two player lemmings – seriously, not to be missed"

    Actually the Megadrive port also had two player lemmings. But yes, it wasn't to be missed.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You missed Nintendo DS from the platforms

    (Anonymous for legal reasons!)

    1. Jedit Silver badge
      FAIL

      This is a Classic Games article. Lemmings was not released for the Nintendo DS in the early 90s, for the rather good reason that the DS wasn't invented for another 15 years, and so it was excluded from the list of platforms.

      On the other foot, I think the Amstrad CPC should have been included. It got its port about the same time as the Spectrum did, and it was the best 8-bit port - colourful, still capable of throwing 60 lemmings about if memory serves, and losing only a little in the switch from mouse to joystick control.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        We've got the C64 version somewhere.

      2. Joe 3
        Happy

        Best 8-bit version?

        SAM Coupé version FTW :)

        ...for the handful of us that owned one!

      3. Chika
        Happy

        Oh yes, Lemmings. Actually, the closest thing I ever saw (at the time) that got close to the Amiga's original version was the version that was released for the Acorn Archimedes. OK, no two player, but it managed everything else, sound and vision, something that the 8-bit versions weren't quite up to on all fronts and the PC version... well let's just say that the PC's graphics back then were a bit of a joke compared with something like the Amiga or even the Speccy!

        I can actually remember teaching a person that was new to using a mouse based system how to use a mouse using an Acorn A3000 running Lemmings! Certainly the game was an original and provided something that so many forget about these days in their rush for graphic and sonic perfection - fun!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Increasing difficulty

    For me the defining aspect of this game as compared to something like Angry Birds was that the levels got harder and required more thinking as you progressed. Many hours spent playing this when i should have been studying.

  10. thefutureboy
    Go

    I remember!

    There was an excellent article in .EXE magazine (remember that people?) by your own delightful Verity Stob, about playing Lemmings and then breaking into the office to complete a level having dreamt of the solution? Any chance of a link? Can't find it on Google...

    1. Alistair Wall

      It's in the <a href="http://www.apress.com/9781590594421">book</a> - page 50.

      1. thefutureboy

        Cheers! It was a good story but not so good I'd want to *pay* for it...

  11. Yag
    Mushroom

    Innocents?

    Oh no!

    *POP* *POP* *POP* *POP* *POP* *POP* *POP* *POP*

    I still remember the 2 player games, ending most of the time with not a single furry creature saved...

  12. Simbu
    Happy

    So many wasted hours...

    I spent a hugely disproportionate amount of my time getting frustrated by Lemmings. Your review has me remembering all sorts of things.

    - The level where you had to dig 50 lemmings though the very thin ground to bring to a non-suidical falling height. Painstaking precision required.

    - The more creative sources of lemming death - squashers, fire, that chain thing that would lynch them.

    - Frustration of building a crazy stairs maze when you just want your lemmings out. Clicking the right one of about 100 lemmings in a hole 20 pixels wide was sheer luck.

    Fond memories. Thanks el Reg!

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Truly a great game ...

    But if I get the Amiga out of the loft/garage and get my children addicted to it then my wife will kill me.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Wife, kids and Amiga in the garage

      Ignore her! Your kids deserve it (the game and some quality time with their father).

      Of course... Ignoring someone who wants to kill you may become dangerous to your health

  14. Sargs
    Devil

    Lemmings is sinfully good fun

    I worked in the games industry at the beginning of the nineties, and one of the more amusing things stuck to our office's wall-of-fun was a copy of a letter that was doing the rounds of the games companies, passed on by various guys who know a guy at DMA Design.

    The first three-quarters of the letter explained how the writer had bought Lemmings for their two sons, how much they loved it for its "educational possibilities" and how wonderful the whole game was...

    ...Then it got a bit excitable.

    Apparently everything was fine until they got to the Hell-themed levels. Satanic content? Not actually the problem. The real problem was that you were saving the Lemmings from Hell, and only through the acceptance of Our Lord Jesus Christ can you be saved from eternal damnation and by rescuing the Lemmings from their presumably justified fate, DMA Design were assuming the powers of GOD HIMSELF and risking their very own immortal souls. But other than that, it was a splendid game and the writer hoped very much that there would be a sequel, with his comments taken on-board.

    It should go without saying that the letter came from a location a wee bit to the west of the UK.

    It should also go without saying that DMA Design paid great heed to the fellow's comments and none of their subsequent games have been anything but good old-fashioned uncontroversial family fun.

    1. Studley

      Cracking stuff

      I can't even begin to imagine what he made of Lemmings Paintball.

      1. Sir Runcible Spoon

        Sir

        I remember we started a 5 man paintball squad back in the 90's called the lemmings.

        We would get everyone there to walk out to site in single file whistling the theme tune :D

        1. Thomas 4
          Happy

          I hope

          ...that green wigs were mandatory. Or at the very least green mop-heads!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Childcatcher

      "two sons"

      One can only hope they turned out ok in spite of all that

    3. El Zed
      Trollface

      Please, ask around..

      We need to see a copy of this letter, suitably redacted if needs be.

      Something this classic, if true, deserves to be preserved online somewhere.

      someone must have kept a copy..

      Then again, thinking about the sort of crap I used to get up to back then, trolling wasn't born with this face..

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    two players

    The Atari ST also had the two player mode - brilliant for sibling warfare, blow up your brother's bridges and send his lemmings to their doom......

    I have Lemmings 3D for PC, where the "game world" is a cylinder that rotates so you can only see one side at a time.........very very difficult indeed.

    1. lpopman
      Headmaster

      titular option

      Actually, that's Lemmings Revolution. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_Revolution for more info.

      There is a fully 3D Lemmings game called unsurprisingly 3D Lemmings. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Lemmings for more info.

      Personally I like all of the lemmings games. Nuke 'em all, I say :)

  16. 1Rafayal
    Windows

    About two years ago I was in a club in Edinburgh where this drunk old dude was cracking on to me by telling me he was responsible for creating Lemmings.

    I thought he was full of shit and told him so, which made him quite angry. It is only now that I realise that he may have been telling the truth, the club in question was literally over the road from Rockstar North's office in Edinburgh at the time.

  17. burning plastic

    Music!!!

    One of the greatest things about lemmings was the music - as soon as I think about the game, I start humming along ;->.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No! No! No!

      Not the music!

      Argh - humming now.

    2. Vincent Ballard
      Thumb Up

      I still can't hear Scotland the Brave or the can-can without imagining little falsetto voices saying "Oh no!" and "Yippee!"

    3. Graham Marsden
      Thumb Up

      Music!!!

      Ah yes, "The Good, The Bad and the Lemmings", "How Much is that Lemming in the Window" and, of course the classic "Oh Little Town of Bethle-lem"! :-)

    4. mittfh
      Happy

      Music? You got it!

      Do a search on YouTube for "Lemmings Music" - you'll find various people have uploaded all the tunes for your entertainment. I've even uploaded the complete set of Acorn tunes (same username as here) - although I'll need to re-record / re-upload some as I forgot to mute my microphone, therefore you can occasionally hear background sounds on some tracks... :)

      Oh, I've also uploaded the complete set of tunes for the Acorn version of "Oh no!" - even more "elevator music" (as the main screen scroll text describes the tunes - which you'll be humming for the rest of the day...)

      And just to annoy everyone:

      They'll be coming round the mountain when they come...

      Ten green lemmings...

      London bridge is falling down...

  18. Mondo the Magnificent
    Thumb Up

    Over the edge

    Man that bring back memories. What a brilliant concept it was at the time too! I played the DOS version on my beloved 386 box.

    I recall spending hours making them dig across, dig up, dig down, stop other lemmings, build steps and my favourite, explode, in my never ending quest to steer these obedient and sacrificial little lemmings to their destination and often to their fate.

    The backdrops were brilliant too, with hills and pillars waiting to be dug through or crossed.

    This was the simple era of gaming when programmers could keep us entertained for hours on end with an encapsulating game that would run on the most meagre AT system and video cards.

  19. Tom_

    Archimedes

    I was still in school back then and we used to play Lemmings on the Archimedes at lunch times. I remember it was a kind of race to see who could complete it first. After completing the 100th level the reward was a black and white scanned photo of the DMA team and sampled audio of them clapping and cheering. There must have only been five or six of them, so this sounded entirely sarcastic. It was awesome! :)

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. ThomH

      An apocryphal story, maybe?

      A story you sometimes here is that the development of Windows 3.1 was delayed when all the programmers became addicted to the Archimedes version of Lemmings on a machine they'd imported.

      As I'm unable to find any sort of source for it beyond other people that think they've heard it too, It's probably not a true story.

    3. Wilseus

      <sarcastic>Ah but you couldn't have played it on the Arc since it only came out on the Amiga, Atari ST, Sinclair Spectrum and PC.</sarcastic>

      Seriously, I've never really worked out why the Archimedes versions of games were generally ignored by the media.

  20. Ol'Peculier
    Happy

    Memories...

    I remember being on a plane going to Dublin with a Mac portable which had Lemmings on it. I was stuck on a level for half of the flight until the chap in the row behind me pointed out the solution!

    Happy days, any chance of an Android version?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Look at yongzh's emulators for various consoles in the SlideME marketplace. A native Android version with touch control would be good though.

      1. Annihilator
        Happy

        Touch control android

        Really?? Touch control?? As if clicking the right lemming in a crowd of a 100 wasn't hard enough already!

    2. KjetilS

      There is a port for Symbian out on the intarweb somewhere :)

  21. DeVino
    Happy

    We played at lunchtime in ye olde british electronics co.

    Some folk would actually get quit cross when the little buggers fell to their death.

  22. Dave 126 Silver badge
    Happy

    At least two levels paid homage...

    ...to other games: 'Beastly' to Altered Beast, and 'Menacing' to Menace, a horizontally-scrolling shoot-em-up. These levels used graphics distinct from the other levels. Both I think were also published by Psygnosis.

    It was the first, and for a long time the only, game I had on my first PC. Alas, I didn't have an Ad-Lib or Soundblaster card, and wouldn't until getting a Gravis Ultrasound.

    1. lpopman
      Headmaster

      titular option

      That would be the Shadow of the Beast, not to be confused with SEGA's Altered Beast.

      IIRC the level even had a parody of the SotB theme playing in the background, I'll have to pull out my A1200 to check.

    2. Charles 9

      Not Altered Beast.

      That was a Sega title. Your more likely refer to Shadow of the Beast, a scrolling beat-em-up with notorious difficulty.

      In any event, the sound in the PC version was OK but nothing compared to the Amiga version, and it didin't support digitized Sound Blaster sound (last I checked). The eventual Mac port found a way to preserve the sounds as well: probably with something like a MOD playing engine.

      And in terms of publishers, you are correct. It was DEVELOPED by DMA Design but PUBLISHED by Psygnosis. Thus the situation Lemmings is in now. Because although Rockstar bought DMA Design, Sony bought Psygnosis, and rights tends to pass by the PUBLISHER rather than the DEVELOPER. IIRC, these days, Sony's Lemmings games are being developed by Team 17 (the developers behind the Worms series).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Sony

        There's a version of Lemmings for the PS3 available for download. It plays like a dog.

  23. NikT
    Thumb Up

    Great Stuff!

    Excellent game - I even have a version with the first six or so levels on my Palm M515 - 160x160 resolution!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I've got it for my original Game Boy

      160x144 according to Wiki.

      1. ThomH

        If we're playing that game

        The Atari Lynx port is fantastic and runs in just 160x102.

  24. A. Lewis
    Thumb Up

    Hoorah!

    A fine tribute to an excellent game.

    No need for car-boot sales, I still have my old A600. Well, somewhere. I'm sure it'd look great on a modern HDTV. And I'm sure I've got a copy of the DOS version kicking around too.

    Also I think mention should be made of the music. Amiga 8-bit synth-y versions of various classical or well-known ditties. They would inevitably get stuck in your head after an extended session of lemming-directing.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Other versions

    The SAM Coupe version was rather good as well!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      SAM Coupe

      Funnily enough I'm sat opposite the guy who designed the SAM Coupe. Got one of the first 40 processor prototypes about 2 feet away from me.

      He was also a fan of that Lemmings version.

    2. ThomH

      But sadly...

      ... Lemmings and Prince of Persia almost alone aren't enough to sustain a machine, no matter how cute its little feet.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I still have the Sega Game Gear version somewhere........

    but that only had 20 lemmings per level max, and a screen the size of a matchbox to put them on.

    Unless you had the huge magnifier thingy for the front..............

  27. Saucerhead Tharpe
    Thumb Up

    I was just about to get rid of my A500 and A1200

    But,I feel the need to play Lemmings now. If I do that, then I feel the throwing out may never happen!

  28. Soruk
    Thumb Up

    Happy days!

    I spent many an hour^Hday misdirecting unsuspecting lemmings on my Archimedes. Ran like a dream on the oldest A310 machine. It also had all the music.

  29. snap2grid
    Go

    Lemmings History

    Disclaimer: I am one of the original DMA Design guys - I'm one of the faces in the Lemmings end screen. I kind of doubt the "drunk old dude" story in Edinburgh was real, none of the guys who developed the game were remotely like that and I'm pretty sure the animator was teatotal. I've even had an experience where some stranger in a pub told *me* that he created Lemmings. Sure.

    I remember when the "Satanic" letter came around, purely because the level was built in the shape of "666". Further irony, the level designer on that one - Mike Dailly, who happened to create Lemmings in the first place - is rather more devout than many.

    Anyway, Mike's DMA history site is at www.dmadesign.org and my own DMA site (newer and not as much there at the moment) is at www.dmadesign.net

    Steve Hammond

    1. AdamWill

      you, sir...

      ...owe me a childhood.

      *taps feet, makes 'pay up!' gesture*

    2. Mike Dolan
      Happy

      Gary Timmons

      Wasn't the animator Gary Timmons? If so then fairly sure he doesn't drink! Admittedly he does have long hair though (still). My claim to fame is that during one of the final demos in a Dundee computer store, I beat him on a 2 player level. So he promptly changed the level so I couldn't repeat the method I used to win ;-)

      1. snap2grid
        Go

        Gary was indeed the animator, and yes, I've never known him to drink! The computer store wouldn't have been SoftWareHouse by any chance? That was a DMA-owned place whose opening was accompanied by an animatronic radio-controlled Lemming on a tricycle.

        Good anecdote! I'll have to remember that when - if - I write the book!

  30. Christoph
    Happy

    As immortalised by Sir Pterry

    When Rincewind controls the terracotta army in "Interesting Times" it's clearly intended to be Lemmings.

  31. Rob Beard
    Pint

    I have some fond memories of Lemmings. I believe it came out when I was about 13, around that time I went on a French exchange trip which was mind-numbingly boring. I spent most of the 10 days I was there reading my copy of ST Format and learning the names to the levels of Lemmings which I remember some of them having some really funny names.

    I had Lemmings on the ST, then the Amiga, and eventually the PC and SNES. I tried to run the PC version of Lemmings on the RM Nimbus 186 PCs at school but got caught out because I found an account which didn't have a password which went straight to DOS, but it kept crashing (stupid SetPC application)so we had to reboot the computer and there were a load of un-logged out sessions. In the end I was caught and banned from the school network for 6 weeks (longest 6 weeks of my life probably, or at least at the time).

    I recently introduced my 9 year old daughter to Lemmings on UAE, she too now enjoys the game although she's only just getting the hang of it.

    Rob

  32. SiliconSlick
    Linux

    Pingus

    Great game... hundreds of hours wasted. I still have the original box/diskettes. Fortunately, I don't have to drag out my old DOS/Windows3 system to play it any more, even if the diskettes were still readable.

    If you were a Lemmings fan you might try Pingus:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingus

    There aren't as many levels but there is a level editor to create more. It also includes a number of levels that are "in development" and not easily accessible in the game. I would love to see a project creating more level packs for the game. I haven't wasted near enough time playing this latest version given the lack of levels.

  33. TS

    This level looks EASY!

    This level looks EASY. I'll just walk out.... hey, WTH, something just ATE my lemming! Ok, I'll build a bridge over it. Oops, wrong lemming. Build another bridge to climb over the trap... HA! I got you now! Wait, don't turn around there. No, don't walk into the trap! Shoot I used my last bridge! GRRR.... 5 ... 4... 3 ... 2 ... 1...

  34. Henry VIII

    My Beloved Ones

    Ah, the memories of days (weeks) gone bye.

    I'm not much of a player, but there are some 6-8 computergames that I really liked. Two of these really had me enslaved. Lemmings was of course one of them. I installed it on my MSDOS computer in the office, and one week later I noticed I had'nt done anything^Hvery much work-related. I did have an impressive list of codes for Lemmings. Sadly the only one solution was to give the darlings the axe: del lemmings\*.*

    The other one was Tetris (the original CGA-resloution). I had to give it the axe also after I started seeing coloured blocks tumbling down in my dreams.

  35. booz
    Thumb Up

    A classic!

    Great to see an old classic dug out again! Especially one that brought me a lot of entertainment over the years.

    There's several active Lemmings communities out there (LemmingsForums and LemmingsHeaven to name two) and a variety of clones and remakes: Lemmini (Java based, platform independent), Lemmix, Lix (networked multiplayer), LemmingsSDL, JSLems and more.

    If you feel nostalgic then get involved!

  36. IsJustabloke
    Facepalm

    I CHOOSE to enoble a simple forum post!

    I hate Lemmings!

    :-|

    Some 10 years after I had spent many happy hours playing Lemmings in the front room of a girl from uni I realised that I could have been "playing" with her. She being too shy to simply jump on me and me being too enraptured to notice her hints.

    I found out when I bumped ino her about 10 years later... oh how we laughed.. she was bloody gorgeous as well.

    Grr! ferkin' Lemmings

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    car boot?

    I repeat, Car boot? You should already have an Amiga at home ready to use. I've got my a1000, a500, a600 and a1200 all ready to go when needed , there are more than 2 dozen classics that have never been bettered on newer platforms. Got my speccy, c64, 8 and 16 bit consoles too for the same reason ...and no, emulators just don't cut it

    1. The Indomitable Gall

      I've just got rid of my personal computer museum...

      Or should I say I asked my parents to get rid of it for me because I couldn't face doing it myself.

  38. Paul RND*1000

    This one is a real happy memories post for me. Lemmings was the first game I ever played on my very own Amiga 500, just long enough after opening the box to get it plugged into the nearest TV for a quick test run. Didn't even bother setting it up on my desk, that's how eager I was to get playing. Sat on the floor playing it until my legs went numb, if I remember correctly.

    "After reading this I know you’re going to spend next Saturday trawling through your nearest car boot sale for a second hand Amiga"

    The heck with that, I have my original Lemmings floppy somewhere (came with the A500 Cartoon Classics package back in 1991) and a mostly-working A4000 which I've been meaning to start a restoration project on for a while.

  39. John 48
    Thumb Up

    aha, the reason no one will play a two player game with me even to this day!

    Yes many fond memories... level 28 of Mayhem still haunts me to this day. I took weeks of trying to complete that. One lemming to save, and about 9 minutes to do it in.

    Two player lemmings is where I earned my reputation as an "utter utter bastard!", to the point that SWMBO (who was my beloved GF at the time of lemmings release) is highly wary of playing any two player (computer!) game with me these days. There they would all be, happily walking safely to the exit, green clad lemmings in one direction, blue the other. Could I resist the temptation to upset the happy balance? It seems not. Quick turn one around with a quick attempt to build by some obstacle, or area of confined headroom, and then "oops", there appears to be a blocker right in the middle of someone's carefully constructed bridge! Or, for devastating effect, (my speciality), dig the ground away from under the opposing exit and watch them frantically try to get a builder to repair the damage. Oh how easy it was to ruin it all with a basher when they finally managed.

    I can still hear the exasperated screams of "oh, I am not playing with you any more!" ;-)))

    Errata : SWMBO was just read this over my shoulder, and proclaimed "its not just me", "its the reason that nobody will play two player lemmings with you! In fact they are now wary of pretty much any multi-player game, right from Scrabble to Monopoly!"

  40. BorkedAgain
    Thumb Up

    animation

    I can't believe nobody's mentioned the animations yet. The way the blockers' hair swung like a tiny shampoo commercial, those beautifully-rendered deathtraps, the splash of a lemming falling too far... and all in a few dozen well- crafted pixels. A masterpiece..

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lemmings for us feeble minded oldsters

    The homebrew DS port should be mentioned (at least in these comments) as assigning the pause button to the trigger buttons was a work of genius, allowing you to pause the action whenever you wanted to place that perfect ladder. IIRC it also featured a fast-forward mode, not in the Amiga original, which was useful once you'd placed all the ladders/holes/blockers and a zoom mode, which made working on the tiny DS screens practical. Very much recommended - almost as much as the Amiga original.

  42. Hud Dunlap
    Mushroom

    Damn Sony

    They Nuked a remake for the iPhone.

    http://www.mobile1up.com/lemmings/blog/

    1. Charles 9

      Competition.

      Sony didn't want to draw people away from their PlayStation Portable line and especially not the upcoming PlayStation Vita.

  43. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not forgetting the novelty record put out under the name of SFX.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVO2zbR_q00

  44. Andrew Smith 1
    Happy

    My first computer game.

    I can still hear the music in my head.

  45. AaronG

    Mike Dailly

    Mike the original programmer and designer of this still codes for fun on Commodore +4 / C16 machines and is a poster over on http://plus4world.powweb.com website.

  46. Paul Hayes 1

    spectrum version

    I remember buying the ZX Spectum port of this game. It was really more than the graphics on a spectrum could handle, the sprites need to be too small. It also crashed....a lot! I ended up taking it back and swapping it for Bart Simpson vs The Space Mutants which was OK but not nearly as good.

    Spent many an hour/day/week/month playing Lemmings when I got an A600 not too much later. I can hear the music in my head now.

  47. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Versions

    Obviously the Amiga and ST version go without saying.

    The Spectrum version was quite remarkable as it would run on a 48k model and was a monochrome version of the 16 bit versions. Even the multi load from tape was painless as levels only took 10 seconds each to load in.

    The Amstrad CPC version was also great with some nice graphics and sound. Only downer was the level codes stopped working above about level 16. As a CPC moment it was quite weird to be buying a Psygnosis game for my Amstrad, let alone seeing their logo on my CTM 644 monitor! The level code bug aside, it was a great game that stood out when other companies were just producing shoddy ports of their 16 bit games.

    C64 version. Sprite limitations mean that the number of lemmings is considerably less than the other 8 bit versions. Shame really.

    I believe the Sam Coupe had a decent version. Never played it, only saw the reviews. Looked promising.

    But my favourite was the Atari Lynx version. Fantastic port to the handheld. Annoyingly I binned my copy when my Lynx went bang. Shame really as the Lynx version is supposed to be fairly collectable.

    Also versions for the PC, Archie and a number of the 90's consoles. But I've not played any of those.

    1. The Indomitable Gall

      C64 version

      "C64 version. Sprite limitations mean that the number of lemmings is considerably less than the other 8 bit versions. Shame really."

      Not quite true. On the C64 version, they used hardware sprites for the playing field and bitmapped the Lemmings onto the background.

      Sprite limitations meant that the visible playing area was only a half-screen wide. The restriction on the number of Lemmings was down to the poor bitmap performance on the C64 (it has an 8x8 tiled layout, not a true cartesian map) and the fact that they had to duplicate the movement onto the sprite-mapped background to drop out pixels.

      All the coordinate calculations were computationally intensive.

  48. RB---
    Happy

    Lemming and Worms - Knock socks off Angry Birds

    They really should bring these games to Android and iOS. They're perfect for tablets and I'm pretty sure they will be well received with people willing to pay good money for them.

  49. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lemmings vs Angry Birds

    Disclaimer: I'm part of the web dev team for Angry Birds, we make the Chrome version and various co-branded efforts. I'm also originally from the UK and grew up with Lemmings and other great games on the Archimedes and other Acorn machines. While AB might have more in common with Worms than Lemmings, they're great inspirations (consciously or not) and many of the developers here are of the right age to have played these as youngsters. AB is fairly simple due to its nature and due to the nature of its native platform (predominantly iOS, also Android) and it's not supposed to be compared to Lemmings, which is a much more complex game.

    P.S. if you're still reading this thread, Steve Hammond, then thanks from all of us who were (are!) old Lemmings fans!

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