Originally uploaded 16th December 2011. Reuploaded here to consolidate on one channel. 5 new RetroAhoy episodes follow this original run. Email: stu@rtbrown.org Twitter: / xboxahoy Reddit: / xboxahoy
Lemmings 2 was an absolutely fantastic sequel, a much more polished game with rich themes, better music and a greater range of challenges in the levels. Although the original gets the credit for being just that, i always preferred L2 the tribes. Never completed it 100% though :-)
+xisumavoid I'm the exact opposite, I loved the original Lemmings and Oh No, More Lemmings, but I really didn't like Lemmings 2 at all. Too many of the powers seemed gimmicky and hard to use accurately. Like the archer and the one that throws snowballs. In the original game, the builder always built at a predictable angle, the miner always dug at a predictable angle, etc. Yet with a lot of the powers in Lemmings 2, it was basically trial and error.
Lemmings was one of the first computer games I played, at school on our.. .Acorn computers in 1992-3. The teachers and students were both all just as hooked, and the hi-score contest between students and teachers was quite heated.
There is something so surreal about lemmings maybe its the music or the the way that the lemmings walk to their deaths, but I always have an existential crisis when I play it.
for me its the weird visuals in the levels, but its probably because i spent a lot of thinking about it as a kid. i always wondered what was on the other side of the entrance trapdoor and the exit. all levels seemed to take place underground, but why were there sometimes trees and buildings? did the exit of one level lead to the entrance of the next, or was there some underground lemming paradise in which they all ended up after beating a level? why would the levels sometimes stretch way beyond the exit when there was nothing of importance there? also, how did the lemmings feel when they had to blow up their friends to progress? why could the stoppers not simply start to walk again?
I like how Stu mentioned Disney and the movie that started this misinformation. In the movie, that scene was really the people scaring and forcing the animals off a ledge.
Adam Porter no the difference is in the game they willingly walk off the ledge just because theyre following the leader. This doesnt happen in reality. lemmings was thought to be unique because their instincts to follow the lemming in front was so great, that they will follow them to their death. Which is a lie told by a Disney live-action documentary. In actuality the lemmings will stop. The movie made it seem like one lemming fell, and the others followed. Only they was being pushed by the cast.
Actually, White Wilderness was not the origin point of the myth that lemmings commit suicide. It's a myth mentioned in documentaries before that film, and its origins go back at least as far as the 19th century if not further.
@@Skyrilla how can this be a rip off of a 2012 video if the original upload of this video was in 2011? Check the description, it iven states there that this is just a re-upload...
Sadly, in the year following when this video was originally uploaded, Studio Liverpool was closed down by Sony after what was essentially an audit of all their European games development studios, bringing to an end the legacy of one of the most prominent, historical UK development studios in Psygnosis. Maybe worth adding that detail in as an annotation?
@Particularly GB Sadly, in the year following when this reply was written, Google+ was shut down, making editing comments impossible. Perhaps you should try another video sharing website?
Radiant Silver Labs, thats interesting. what was that like? also, if you don't mind me asking, what was it that made you decide to go into indie development?
It was awesome, very high working conditions (and people bringing you bacon sandwiches to your desk in the morning!), and great people. I wanted to leave because actually being a coder on something like GTA, is not really designing games. By that point you are a cog in the machine and if you ever want to live your dreams of writing your own games (i.e you design them, you code them and you make all the high level choices), then you really have to become an indie.
This was the first PC game I ever played, my school had an after school club where you could play on their computers. They had Lemmings and some game where you play a flying dinosaur with a gun on its back and flew around shooting things(no clue what it was called) but Lemmings was always so cool
My elementary school had us play this sci-fi action game called Math Blaster where you fought against a robot empire by solving math problems. As a little kid it felt pretty epic lol
In my Amiga times, someone gave me a demo disc of Lemmings with four playable levels, long before the craze started. I immediately knew that this would go very very big. It was such a fresh experience and felt like you had known this forever at the same time.
Man, I used to and still sometimes watch your cod weapon videos. Crazy how time flies, this video was so good I stopped eating until it was over. Magnificent content.
Lemmings is one of my earliest memories of a video game. I wasn't allowed to touch the computer, but I watched my mom play it for a couple days. She ended up rage quitting it! Must've been pretty hard. XD Thank you for this showcase, it brings back memories.
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.
I played this game as a child on the Atari ST, I would have been maybe 8 or 9. At that age I wasn't clever enough to be able to do the later levels, some of them seemed utterly impossible. I picked the game up years later as a young adult, and found that it is actually really well structured if you play it linearly. It starts with the easy stuff and then gradually introduces levels that require a bit of out-of-the-box thinking (one example is that it is possible to release blockers without blowing them up if you dig the ground out from under them). By the time I got to the Mayhem levels I was able to figure them out using the techniques I'd accumulated throughout the game, and the final level ended up being a cinch. It was really satisfying to be able to beat this game that had confounded me as a kid.
I remember playing a version on nitrome that had little ink blots and you controlled their routes by doodling ramps and walls and stuff. So many good games
I used to love this game on the Acorn Achemedies, my old school had one of those back in the day and it had this game on it. It was the first time I'd ever seen Lemmings and it blew me away with the graphics and sampled music as I was used to 8 bit stuff.
My father loved this game but was never able to find a copy to show me, I’ve never known what the game he loved was like but yet now I know. All I can say is thank you. However sadly he is gone now, I’m sure he would have loved your small documentary.
i had no idea there's music in lemmings for start :P and now to learn about him as Cold Storage oh dear :) missed a lot with just pc speaker back then :D dune2 music all along :(
First time seeing this video as I did not dig for older videos. I really hope Stuart will find his way back to videos, he is a unique storyteller, mesmerizing also... He is lost but hopefully shall be found again.
I miss playing Lemmings. Used to stay up all night trying to beat levels. Sure wish I could find it again but alas I guess I am SOL for that game. Thanks to my son for sending this link to me.
There's an amazing homebrew port of Lemmings on the DS with nice additions like pre-selecting a lem and giving them a job when they get to where you need them to be.
because I grew up with Lemmings on the Amiga (and be cause I watched the brief history of graphics) you sir are gaining yet another Sub... but lemmings man... Love them !
You can tell Stuart has evolved his style since his last episode of this series. The sound is richer, and the script feels more evocative of his later style
Just a couple of months before The Lemmings hit the shelf's (well, the pirates...), there was a little demo circulating that had the lemmings (differently colored) walk around. It was just a cute demo, but then the Lemmings came out .... I never found that demo on the interwebs :(
Ah I love Lemmings as a kid (Snes version), although I never could get very far before getting stumped. I never thought about how good the sprites are for only being 8X8.
The story of DMA was one I already knew, but I never knew that Psygnosis would become studio Liverpool. They released one of my favorite racing titles: F1 Championship edition
Haha! I don't play video games anymore but used to when I was a kid, just hearing this music brought up deep levels of oppressed stress from when I panicked and failed to get those lemmings safe!
I loved this game, especially on the Amiga which had digitized sound effects. I think "A Beast of a Level" (the one with the trees he showed) was one of my favourites due to the excellent music for it (from Shadow of the Beast). So much fun.
Really interesting video! Loved Lemmings when I was a kid, and as a non-native English speaker it was so easy to get into without knowing a single English word.
