Few games have been ported to as many systems and seen as many variants as DMA Design's Lemmings. And it's no wonder! There's just something about trying to solve puzzles with suicidal rodents that's incredibly satisfying.
My QA company did the testing on this (and the sequel) and I wrote the strategy guide for it (which is an interesting story in itself). I'll never, ever forget the music as it was burned into my brain from all the time spent with it.
@@barrelbobcat428s_rebelion6 What was what like, specifically? The game was a shockingly simple, adorable affair that most people found quickly addicting. We had no trouble lining up staff to take part in testing it. Psygnosis was also a very solid client to work with. They were extremely competent and responsive. The nature of the game was such that there were countless ways to go outside the desired limitations of the design due to how flexible and creative you could be within it and that made it a bear to test. It was in our labs for much longer than the average product which also helped to burn that soundtrack into my head.
I had fond memories of the DOS version as a kid. I'd always cry everytime I failed and a single lemming died. But when I'd get so frustrated at the little bastards I'd plan ways to get the killed in inventive and sadistic traps. This game made me a sociopath. Ah, good times.
Every time I see Lemmings I just can't help but smile. SO many memories and not just of me playing, but almost my entire family. We used to swap strategies, horror stories, comedic moments (not related to the horror stories...yeeeaaah. Right. ^_- ) etc. Those were the good ol' days ♥
yes! This was the game that brought my dysfunctional family together. Even my dad who thought video games were a stupid waste of time liked this one. Lemmings was a big part of my childhood
Could not have said it better myself. I remember this feeling fondly... I was heavily into ant farms at the time (both in real life and playing SimAnt a ton!) and loved the idea of simulating a bunch of little creatures. Playing Lemmings was like looking into a surreal virtual world through my computer screen. Like ants, but cooler. They seemed so alive! And I could *control* these little animated dudes, either to help or abuse them, and it was so freaking awesome.
Lemmings is owned by Sony now, and they actually released a remake of Lemmings + Oh No! More Lemmings for the PS3 and PSP in 2007. Awesome versions, I thought, especially the PSP one which made an excellent game to play on the go. They were going to release one for iOS and other mobile platforms but that was canned in 2010 for some reason.
I remember renting this for the Genesis multiple times. I played it so much my Dad took away the controller at one point. Only game that ever happened with. Good times.
I've only played it on the Amiga, with the most impressive music ever. I've just seen, that they made a Commodore 64 version. And the retro geek in me, almost cries tears of joy hearing what they squezed out of that amazing SID chip.
Notable ones: Sega Genesis version of Lemmings, Sega Master System, Amiga. My first time playing it is three levels... Just Dig, Only Floaters can Survive this, and Tailor Made for Blockers.
I strongly remember as a teenager going to a shop selling games, to buy a joystick for my ST. As I entered, there was this huge TV on the left, running Lemmings for the Amiga. I was with a friend and we kept watching someone else play for a while. We weren't the only ones, there were several more people doing the same. It was love at first sight for everybody there. It's hard to explain now, but the game looked, sounded and played like something out of this world, at least to our senses.
This is one of the first games I remember my older brothers playing. We only had the original DOS version. They had a notebook full of codes for almost every level all the way through mayhem! To this day I just play a piece of the soundtrack and they just about fall over from the wave of nostalgia lol
Yes, because the gameplay is so good, it translates to every system. I used to play it on the phreaking game gear, and I loved it. And I had the Amiga version too.
The guys from DMA Design visited my school in the mid 90s, promoting a career in games development. Nice to know they really made it big :) wish I still had some of the promotional stuff they handed out to pass on to a true collector.
The Acorn Archimedes version is the definitive version! It was the only thing that motivated me to go to school back in the day since they had it on the computers there.
That's the system that introduced me to Lemmings, too! The Windows version with the unofficial Java add-on "Lemmini" comes close as it adds the missing levels (MENACE!, etc) and music, but the Acorn version was fantastic.
It was so freaking difficult! Despite vigorous attempts, I never managed to make it through the last 20 levels when I played it as a kid. This is probably why it still holds a kind of magic for me. You really have to be made of special stuff to unlock the whole of it.
Really? There are videos of it on RU-vid, and I've played it myself! See here, listed as one of the last commercial C64 games: www.lemon64.com/?game_id=1513 Looks like it was converted by Thomas Mittelmeyer in 1994.
Lemmings... hours and hours passed playing with it, both Amiga and DOS versions. The first tune heard in this video it's one of my favourites in the DOS version of Oh No More Lemmings. Pure OPL3 FM delight :-D
I love how London has preserved most of their buildings, and they have laws regulating how tall they can be. They genuinely care about their history. Over here perfectly good buildings get demolished to build something that looks newer. Perfectly good trees get demolished to build miles of parking lots! I live around Detroit, and we probably have the oldest preserved buildings around, simply because no one wants to build anything new here! haha! But honestly they dont need to! Their beautiful!
Shadow of the Beast, Blood Money, and Lemmings were staples of my gaming habits back then when I had an Amiga 1000. But my brother had the Amiga 500 and since it was an AIO machine and more easy to move, when our parents weren't home, we'd bring it down to the living room, drag the coffee table to the middle of the floor, and hook it up to the big woodgrain floor model TV we had.
I DJ in the bar attached to the small two-floor office in which Lemmings was made! It’s now a Mexican-inspired restaurant, but it has a plaque on the wall dedicated to Lemmings and the history of the building.
Ah memories. I remember having this game on a great stonking blue 3 1/2 floppy and thinking to myself: "Blue floppy disks? We're living in the future now, man."
I've played just about every version of lemmings that came out for the Amiga, including all the special versions that normally came out each Christmas. The original took me 3 days to complete on all difficulties and I had to fake an illness to skip school by sucking a bottle onto my cheek and creating a bruise then pretending I'd had a bad fall. Amazingly my parents fall for it :D Never relied on any guide either, because back then there was no internet for anyone outside of a research lab.
Used to live next to the old DMA offices in Dundee, the city has little Lemmings statues around the city to honor the game, DMA and Dundee's gaming history. :)
I had Lemmings on Sega Genesis/Megadrive. It was pretty popular game in my family & we were trying to complete this game together. We manage to get pretty far until the stages became just too difficult for us. Me & my cousin played the two player mode alot. It was pretty fun to try getting points for yourself & sabotage your friend's game at the same time.
Ah, Lemmings..such a classic! I think I played the X-mas version and the original as the kid. I can remember a level with snowmen...must have been the X-mas version.
One level that I'll never forget it "I have a cunning plan". Not just because I love Blackadder, but my father and I got stuck on that one for ages. I also remember some of the level codes from the Acorn Archimedes version, since they were short phrases. Sometimes, you could even guess them, as they'd follow certain patterns.
Wise words phreakindee. Sorry for hijacking your board here. In all honesty I do love all the retro and console sound hardware. The C64, the NES, Genesis, Amiga, SNES, MIDI, MOD, I even have my PC speaker wired to my SoundBlaster AWE so that it sounds as good as possible. And the PC speaker, as horrible as you want to say it is sometimes, it always makes you smile.
My memory of this game is sitting infront of an old computer, eating fruit and nut cadbury's chocolate and playing this. I don't even remember what it was like, just that I freaking loved it xD
For what it's worth, the music was quite a bit better on the Amiga port. Playing Lemmings on my Amiga 500 was one of my first memories playing a computer game!
Great info, phreakindee. I played Blood Money as a kid, and remembered DMA Design from the intro, yet somehow never even linked it to Lemmings (or anything else after that). And I remember Davey Jones Locker from Blood Money, so that adds up. And I seriously doubt anyone here, maybe the whole set combined, spent as much time as me on DeluxePaint, yet I didn't even know about the 8/16 pixel challenge either. Nice! (The only DP fun fact I remember is Guybrush Threepwood's name.)
Rockstar should really buy the lemmings licence again so they could make some new awesome Lemmings games from its original developers. I would love to see what lemmings would be like with all rockstar has learned over the years. I doubt it would have strippers and rocket launchers but it would be so cool to see the writing and (dark) humor Rockstar North is currently known for.
Note on the Lemmings Myth: It emerged from Canada & Scandinavia. Though some species of lemmings will leave the group after a population density line is crossed, even crossing perilous conditions to do it, observers in both regions noticing the decreased numbers started the rumor of them committing mass suicide. When White Wilderness was being filmed, they were (ironically) aiming to dispel the myth of mass suicide and clarify it was just migration. However, to add "drama" to the scene, they pushed the lemmings off the cliff to their deaths, the crew not even certain if they were actively aiding the migration or not. Despite their original intention, their action (along w/ the narration selling this as a mania/sudden irrational compulsion) not only reinforced the myth but made it considerably more widespread than before.
Exactly, they felt real and like own little world. More so that even "god" games of the past, like Populous, Megalomania etc. The animation and attention to detail was awesome. And the music, I have to give music credit too, it felt so....festive lol.
Already seen this on Blip, but had to come over to favorite and comment! Great video! Though I wish you covered the Amiga version, I understand your connection with DOS. It does have some rocking FM.In the late 90's I got this for DOS and just thought "This isn't right".One of many DOS games that eventually got me into emulating the Amiga, then getting the real thing again.I have managed to beat it by myself, takes alot of patience. Very nice ending screen on the Amiga anyway.The game team claps
Think of it this way,i'm not sure how many Amigas were sold in the U.S.,although I did see some figures once and it was higher than I thought.The 500 sold more than the other models I recall,so eat your heart out those that think the Amiga was only used for the video toaster.Weather it sold 300,000 or over a million or more,thats alot of potential sales for games,and if it worked on one,it worked on the others,more than you could say for PC's.An Amiga owner,even here,had it good for a long time.
Thats all i'm trying to say,my concern is not with multi thousand dollar sound cards that NO ONE had, and no companies supported.This channel is mostly about gaming,and the Amiga was the first affordable computer that had realistic sound in my opinion,it lasted till 94 and even in the VGA world,it did just fine,and I always thought its music was better than FM,and usually the MT-32.The AWE,affordable and good support,and it was much better than FM I believe.Better than what MOST people had.
@MrShot97 and @raymangold22 I can settle this: they're both freaking awesome in their own ways, end of story. One can appreciate both with no ill side effects. It's true! I love FM, I also love samplers. Neither one is objectively better than the other, it's all up to personal preference. Limited oneself to a single type of music or sound leads to a very boring existence.
The soundtrack for the Lemmings is burnt into my brain so badly that I sometimes hear it when I sleep. Sometimes in the middle of the night I wake up and all I can hear is that first level theme over and over. I actually think that warning at the front of the box isn't a joke.
If Sony had released the PSP version for iOS and mobile devices as was planned in 2010, I'd have been one darned happy Lemmings player. Sucks it got canceled, still hoping for a proper mobile version as I imagine it'd be perfect for touch screens.
There was also an unofficial port to the Apple IIgs by French programming group Brutal Deluxe. It borrowed the best parts from the other platform ports to create an optimized version. From their site: graphics from Atari ST, MIDI music from DOS (converted to SynthLab tunes), and digital sound effects from the Macintosh and even some bug fixes.
Remember playing this on the Amiga. Awesome computer Awesome game. Also I currently own a version for the PS2 which has all the original levels with updated graphics.
Thank you! I definitely thought about mainly covering the Amiga version instead of the DOS one, but since I grew up with the DOS port and already dedicated my Christmas Lemmings review to the Amiga game, I figured I'd stick to DOS and mention the Amiga and other ports as a side-note. The Amiga really is my favorite "classic" version of Lemmings, next to the awesomely enhanced Macintosh port.
So glad I found this series -- thanks for going through these! Did you ever play The Humans? Think it was released in 1992 for PC and was ported to just about everything at the time. I found it at a garage sale in 1994 but couldn't get it to run on my Win95 machine.
Oh, I get it now. I just checked out your channel, I can see that you are absolutely in love with FM...alright, I get it. I do have to say I really don't think a majority of people agree with you thats its better, but I do absolutely respect your opinion. I see you feel very passionately about it.
The first time I ever touched a computer was to play Lemmings. It was in the school classroom in the late 80s (the only computer in the school back then) and I think it was an Amiga.
For the home user, 16-bit micros like the Amiga, Atari ST, or Apple IIgs were much more affordable and more game oriented. IBM's PS/2 offerings in 1987 were priced well above what a household could afford and didn't include any sound outside of a PC speaker. Any IBM PC compatible priced for home use at the time was usually XT class with CGA/Tandy and later EGA video and in very rare cases, an Adlib sound card. Compared to them, the Amiga, ST, and IIgs were miles ahead in capabilities.
Yay Lemmings. Great review and some interesting information about it's development that I did not know. Glad you mentioned the fact that the suicidal lemmings thing is a myth. Also they're not bipedal and have no talent for bridge building.
