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Lemmings (video game)

February 06, 2023

Lemmings is a puzzle–strategy video game originally developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis for the Amiga in 1991 and later ported for numerous other platforms. The game was programmed by Russell Kay, Mike Dailly and David Jones, and was inspired by a simple animation that Dailly created while experimenting with Deluxe Paint.

Lemmings
Home computer cover art by Adrian Powell[12]
Developer(s)
DMA Design
Publisher(s)
Designer(s)David Jones
Programmer(s)
Artist(s)
  • Gary Timmons
  • Scott Johnston
  • Mike Dailly
Composer(s)
Platform(s)
Release
14 February 1991
  • Amiga
    MS-DOS
    Classic Mac OS
    Atari ST
    ZX Spectrum
    Archimedes
    PC-98
    Amiga CDTV
    FM Towns
    X68000
    PC Engine CD-ROM²
    SNES
    Mega Drive
    Game Gear
    Amstrad CPC
    Master System
    NES
    • NA: November 1992
    • EU: 19 May 1993
    Commodore 64
    3DO
    Lynx
    SAM Coupé
    Game Boy
    • EU: 1993
    • NA: August 1994
    Philips CD-i
    Amiga CD32
    J2ME
Genre(s)Puzzle, Strategy
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer

The objective of the game is to guide a group of anthropomorphised lemmings through a number of obstacles to a designated exit. To save the required number of lemmings to win, one must determine how to assign a limited number of eight different skills to specific lemmings that allow the selected lemming to alter the landscape, to affect the behaviour of other lemmings, or to clear obstacles to create a safe passage for the rest of the lemmings.

Lemmings was one of the best-received video games of the early 1990s. It was the second-highest-rated game in the history of Amstrad Action, and was considered the eighth-greatest game of all time by Next Generation in 1996. Lemmings is also one of the most widely ported and best-selling video games, and is estimated to have sold around 20 million copies between its various ports. The popularity of the game also led to the creation of sequels, remakes and spin-offs, and has also inspired similar games. Many retrospective reviews have cited it as one of the greatest games of all time.

Gameplay

 
Lemmings cross a bridge and tunnel through a rock formation in the Amiga version.

Lemmings is divided into a number of levels, grouped into four difficulty categories.[13] Each level begins with one or more trap doors opening from above, releasing a steady line of lemmings who all follow each other.[14] Levels include a variety of obstacles that prevent lemmings from reaching the exit, such as large drops, booby traps and pools of lava.[15]

The goal of each level is to guide at least a portion of the green-haired, blue-robed lemmings from the entrance to the exit by clearing or creating a safe passage through the landscape for the lemmings to use.[16][17] Unless assigned a special task, each lemming will walk in one direction ignoring any other lemming in its way (except Blockers), falling off any edges and turning around if they hit an obstacle they cannot pass.[18] A lemming can die in a number of ways: falling from a great height, drowning or falling into lava, disappearing off the bottom of the level map, being caught in a trap or fire, or being assigned the Bomber skill. Every level has a time limit; if the timer expires, the level ends and the player is evaluated on the number of lemmings rescued.

To successfully complete the level, the player must assign specific skills to certain lemmings. Which skills and how many uses of each are available to the player varies from level to level, and the player must assign the skills carefully to successfully guide the lemmings.[17] There are eight skills that can be assigned:[16] Climbers climb vertically though fall down if they hit an overhang. Floaters use a parachute to fall safely from heights. Bombers explode after a five-second timer, destroying themselves and any destructible landscape in close proximity, though not damaging other lemmings or traps. Blockers stand still and prevent other lemmings from passing; lemmings that hit a Blocker simply reverse direction. Builders build a stairway of 12 steps. Bashers, Miners and Diggers dig horizontally, diagonally downwards or directly downwards respectively.[13]

While the player is able to pause the game to inspect the level and status of the lemmings, skills can only be assigned in real-time. Lemmings are initially released at a rate predetermined by the level (from 1 to 99). The player can increase the rate as desired to a maximum of 99, and later decrease it down to, but not lower than, the initial rate. The player also has the option to "nuke" all the remaining lemmings on the screen, converting them to Bombers.[13] This option can be used to abort a level when in a no-win situation, remove any Blockers that remain after the remaining lemmings have been rescued, or end a level quickly once the required percentage of saved lemmings has been reached.[16]

The four difficulty groups – "Fun", "Tricky", "Taxing" and "Mayhem" – are used to organise the levels to reflect their overall difficulty.[19] This rating reflects several factors, including the number of obstacles the player has to surpass, the limitation on the number of types of skills available to assign, the time limit, the minimum rate of lemming release, and the percentage of lemmings that must be saved.[17] Some versions have additional difficulty ratings with more levels in each.

Two-player mode

 
In two-player mode, each player can only control lemmings of their own colour but attempt to guide any lemming to their own goal.

The original Lemmings also has 20 two-player levels. This took advantage of the Amiga's ability to support two mice simultaneously, and the Atari's ability to support a mouse and a joystick simultaneously.[20] Each player is presented with their own view of the same map (on a vertically split screen), can only give orders to their own lemmings (green or blue), and has their own base. The goal is to get more lemmings (regardless of colour) into one's own base than the other player. Gameplay cycles through the 20 levels until neither player gets any lemmings home.[16]

Development

Mike Dailly, the first employee[21] of DMA Design and one of the programmers for Lemmings, provided a detailed history of the development of the game entitled "The Lemmings Story" in 2006.[20] David Jones, founder of DMA Design, has also commented on the development and success of Lemmings.[21]

 
Gary Timmons improved Mike Dailly's lemming walking animation (left) to make it appear less stiff.

The inspiration for gameplay came as a result of a simple animated character sprite in an 8×8 pixel box created by Dailly using Deluxe Paint[21] as part of development for Walker, then envisioned as a sequel to Blood Money.[20] Dailly was able to quickly produce an animated graphic showing his creations moving endlessly, with additional graphical improvements made by Gary Timmons and other members of the DMA Design team to help remove the stiffness in the animation. One member, Russell Kay, observed that "There's a game in that!", and later coined the term "lemmings" for these creations, according to Dailly. Allowing the creatures to move across the landscape was based on a Salamander weapon concept for Blood Money and demonstrated with the animations.[20]

Levels were designed based on a Deluxe Paint interface, which allowed several of the members to design levels, resulting in "hundreds of levels".[21] There were several internal iterations of the levels, each designer challenging the others. Dailly pointed out that David Jones "used to try and beat us, and after proudly stabbing a finger at the screen and saying 'There! Beat that!', we'd calmly point out a totally new way of getting around all his traps, and doing it in a much simpler method. 'Oh...', he'd mutter, and scramble off to try and fix it." They also sent internally tested levels to Psygnosis, getting back the results of their testing via fax. While most were solved quickly, Dailly commented that "Every now and again though, the fax would be covered in scribbles with the time and comments crossed out again and again; this is what we were striving for while we were designing the levels, and it gave us all a warm fuzzy feeling inside."[20]

Each of the designers had a somewhat different style in their levels: Dailly's levels often had titles containing clues to what to do (such as "It's Hero Time", suggesting that one lemming had to be separated from the crowd) and generally required the player to perform several actions at once; Gary Timmons's levels were minimalistic, with popular culture references in the titles, and Scott Johnston's (whose mother was the first voice of the lemmings) levels were generally tightly packed. Dailly was also responsible for the "custom" levels based on other Psygnosis and Reflections Interactive Amiga games, including Shadow of the Beast, Menace, Awesome and Shadow of the Beast II. These "crossover" levels also used music from those games, though in ports these levels have been removed or altered to remove such references. After they developed most of the hard levels, they then created several simple levels either by copying the existing ones or creating new layouts; as Dailly states, "This I believe is where many games fall down today, they do not spend the time making a good learning curve." Timmons is credited with the official drawings of the lemmings, as necessitated by the need of Psygnosis for box cover artwork.[20]

Music was originally created by Brian Johnston (Scott's younger brother), who sampled bits of copyrighted music. This had been common practice, but at that point there was a growing awareness of music copyright. Psygnosis asked Tim Wright to replace the offending tracks, who often used arrangements and reworkings of classical and traditional music to avoid copyright problems.[20] Music tracks in the game include: "Galop Infernal" from Orpheus in the Underworld (the music by Offenbach often used for the can-can), "Rondo alla Turca" from Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 11, "Dance of the Reed Flutes" from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, "Dance of the Little Swans" from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, "Ten Lemmings" (a track that uses melodies from traditional song "Ten Green Bottles", Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2 (the part used as funeral march), Wagner's "Bridal Chorus" (popularly known as "Here Comes the Bride")), "London Bridge is Falling Down", the English folk tune "Forest Green" (adapted into the hymn "All Beautiful the March of Days"), the carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem" mixed with the melody from the film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain", and "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?".[20]

The two-player option was inspired by then-current games Populous and Stunt Car Racer. DMA Design initially wanted to use a null-modem connection between two machines to allow competitive play, but ended up using the ability of the Amiga to have two mouse pointer devices usable at the same time and thus created the split-screen mode.[20]

Ports and remakes

The popularity of the game on the Amiga led to its rapid porting to many other platforms, and it is regarded as one of the most widely ported video games.[21][22] Within a year of its release, the game had been ported to Atari ST, Sinclair Spectrum, PC and SNES.[21] David Jones stated that after porting the game to 20 systems, he stopped keeping count of additional ports.[21] Other commercial ports of the original game include 3DO, Acorn Archimedes, Apple IIGS, Apple Macintosh, CDTV, Commodore 64, NES, Sega Master System and Mega Drive, PC Engine, Philips CD-i and Sharp X68000.[14] In 1998, an open source and cross-platform clone was also made, called Pingus.[23]

The license to the Lemmings intellectual property had remained with Psygnosis, which became part of Sony Computer Entertainment in 1993 but ultimately folded in 2012, leaving Lemmings as a Sony property. Sony has used that to craft more modern remakes.[24] In early 2006, Sony released a remake of Lemmings for the PlayStation Portable, developed by Team17. It features all 120 levels from the original game, 36 brand-new levels as well as DataPack support (similar to the Extra Track system featured in Wipeout Pure), and a user-level editor. Every level in the game is a pre-rendered 3D landscape, although their gameplay is still 2D and remains faithful to the original game. User levels can be constructed from pre-rendered objects and distributed by uploading them to a PlayStation-specific Lemmings online community.[19][25] The soundtrack also marks the final video game score created by longtime composer Tim Follin after he announced his retirement from the industry in mid-2005.[26] In October 2006 the game was ported by developer Rusty Nutz for the PlayStation 2 with use of the EyeToy.[27] The basic change in the concept is that the player must stretch and use their limbs in the recorded picture to aid the lemmings.[28] In 2007, Team17 produced a similar remake of Lemmings for the PlayStation 3 for download through the PlayStation Network. The game has the similar graphical improvements as the PSP title, as well as on-line scoreboards and additional levels developed for high-definition display, but lacks the ability to create and share levels as the PSP version offers.[29] Another remake, Lemmings Touch, was released for PlayStation Vita on 27 May 2014, developed by D3T Ltd.[30] Sony studio Sad Puppy released a mobile-friendly version of Lemmings for iOS and Android in December 2018.[31]

Platform Released Developer Publisher Note
Atari ST 1991 DMA Design Psygnosis
MS-DOS 1991 DMA Design Psygnosis
ZX Spectrum 1991 DMA Design Psygnosis
PC-98 1991 DMA Design Imagineer
Macintosh 1991
SNES 1991 Sunsoft[32] Psygnosis
Commodore 64 1992 DMA Design
CDTV 1992 DMA Design Psygnosis
FM Towns 1992 4000Do Inc. Imagineer
Sharp X68000 1992 BANDIT Inc. Imagineer
NES 1992 Ocean Software Sunsoft
Game Gear 1992 Probe Sega
Master System 1992 Probe Sega
Amstrad CPC 1992 DMA Design Psygnosis
Mega Drive 1992 Sunsoft SunsoftNA/JP
SegaPAL
PC Engine 1992 Sunsoft Sunsoft
3DO 1993 DMA Design PsygnosisNA
Electronic Arts VictorJP
Atari Lynx 1993 DMA Design Atari Corporation
Commodore Plus/4 1993[33] TCFS[34] Unfinished
Philips CD-i 1993 DMA Design Philips
SAM Coupé 1993 Chris White[35] Fred Publishing
Game Boy 1993 Ocean Software Imagineer
Amiga CD32 1994 DMA Design Psygnosis
Windows 95 1995 Visual Sciences Psygnosis Included with Oh No! More Lemmings
OS/2 1995[36] Focus Studios Demo only
Apple IIGS 1997 Brutal Deluxe[37] Unofficial
MSX2 1997 N.I. N.I.[38]
PlayStation 1998 Psygnosis Psygnosis[39] Included with Oh No! More Lemmings
Game Boy Color 2000 J-Wing Take-Two[40] Included with Oh No! More Lemmings
J2ME 2005 iFone
 
A floppy disk containing Christmas Lemmings (1991) for the Amiga

Expansions

Lemmings received some expansion packs following its launch. Oh No! More Lemmings, originally released for the Amiga in 1991 both as a data disk or standalone game, added five varying difficulties – Tame, Crazy, Wild, Wicked and Havoc – each with 20 new levels.[41] The game also features enhanced graphics and altered sound effects.[42] The expansion was also ported to Acorn Archimedes, Atari ST, DOS, Macintosh, and SAM Coupé, and the levels were made available with the Game Boy Color, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation and Sega Mega Drive versions of Lemmings.[43][10] Oh No! More Lemmings received generally positive reviews. Dan Slingsby of CU Amiga found the game addictive, calling the puzzles "ingenious",[41] and Peter Lee of Amiga Action praised the quality and difficulty of the levels;[44] Stuart Campbell of Amiga Power was disappointed by the lack of fixes from the original game, and Ed Ricketts of ST Format criticised the difficulty gradient of the levels and the price of the expansion, but both ultimately gave positive reviews nonetheless.[42][45]

Christmas Lemmings, also known as Holiday Lemmings, was also released as a series of short games released between 1991 and 1994. The gameplay remains unchanged from the base game, which is not required. First released as Xmas Lemmings as two four-level demos in 1991 and 1992, there were two later full retail releases on the Amiga and Atari ST in 1993 and 1994, both with an additional 32 levels.[46] The games were well-received; Rob Mead of Amiga Format described it as "funny, frustrating and incredibly addictive", despite being disappointed by the number of levels,[47] and Will Greenwald of PC Magazine ranked it among the best Christmas video games in 2014.[48]

Reception

The original sales for Lemmings on the Amiga topped 55,000 copies on the first day of sales; in comparison, Menace sold 20,000 copies and Blood Money sold 40,000 copies cumulatively. With all ports included, Mike Dailly estimated that 15 million copies of Lemmings were sold between 1991 and 2006.[70] In 2011, Luke Plunkett from Kotaku placed the figure at over 20 million,[71] a figure which has been quoted as far back as 1997.[72]

At the time of its first release, Lemmings received several high scores from gaming magazines, with only the level of graphics and sound receiving some small amount of criticism.[73] David Sears of Compute!, in his review of Lemmings for the PC, stated that "perhaps Psygnosis has tapped into the human instinct for survival in formulating this perfect blend of puzzle, strategy, and action."[74] Amiga Computing stated that "Lemmings is absolutely brilliant. Psygnosis have managed to produce a game that is not only totally original, but also features the kind of addicting gameplay that will keep the player coming back for more time and time again."[75] A review from the Australian Commodore and Amiga Review (ACAR) stated that "above all, the concept is simple, and the game is a lot of fun."[76] Computer Gaming World stated that "Not since Tetris has this reviewer been so addicted to, or completely fascinated with, a series of challenging puzzles ... follow the crowd and get Lemmings".[77] In 1992 the magazine named it its Action Game of the Year.[78] The game was reviewed in 1991 in Dragon by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars.[79] The Lessers reviewed the Macintosh version of the game in 1993 in Dragon, also giving that version 5 stars.[80]

In 1994 Electronic Gaming Monthly complimented the Lynx version's large number of options and password feature, and remarked, "Lemmings has always been a good strategy game, and the Lynx version continues the tradition."[52] The following year they reviewed the CD-i version, criticising that it has nothing but the obligatory full-motion video intro to set it apart from the numerous ports of the game that had already been released over the past four years.[53] GamePro made the same criticisms, commenting that "this former 16-bit puzzler isn't going anywhere new on the CD-i."[81]

Next Generation's review of the 3DO version assessed that "If you've played any version, you've played this one, too, but if you haven't tried it, this is one of the better ones, and it's still one game that's addictive as hell."[59]

In 1996, Computer Gaming World declared Lemmings the 12th-best computer game ever released,[82] and that same year, Next Generation declared it the 8th-greatest game of all time, and "second only to Tetris" in the puzzle genre.[66] In 2004, readers of Retro Gamer voted Lemmings as the 21st-top retro game, with the editors calling it "perhaps Psygnosis' finest hour and a turning point in the puzzle genre."[83] In 1991, PC Format named Lemmings one of the 50 best computer games ever. The editors wrote, "Yes, we know it sounds stupid, but you will like it – everyone else has."[84] In 1994, PC Gamer US named Lemmings the 30th-best computer game ever. The editors called it "one of the biggest puzzlers ever released for PC" and "cleaner and less complicated" than its sequel.[85] That same year, PC Gamer UK named it the 25th-best computer game of all time, calling it "a seminal title."[86]

In 1998, PC Gamer declared it the 21st-best computer game ever released, and the editors called it "as fresh and addictive today as it was when it was first released".[87] In 2018, Complex listed the game 70th on its "The Best Super Nintendo Games of All Time".[88] In 1995, Total! ranked the game 81st on their Top 100 SNES Games summarizing: "The game that spawned a dozen imitators is still one of the best platform puzzlers available."[89]

Legacy

 
Sculpture of Lemmings in Seabraes Park, Dundee, near the original office of DMA Design

Lemmings inspired several sequels, including the Christmas Lemmings short games that were released between 1991 and 1994, and the 1991 expansion Oh No! More Lemmings. Stand-alone sequels were Lemmings 2: The Tribes (1993),[90] All New World of Lemmings (1994),[14] 3D Lemmings (1995)[91] and Lemmings Revolution (2000).[14] By mid-1995, Lemmings and its sequels had accumulated combined sales of more than 4 million units worldwide.[92] Two spin-off games were also made, both in 1996; Lemmings Paintball[91] and The Adventures of Lomax.[93]

The intellectual property (IP) of Lemmings stayed with the initial publisher Psygnosis, who were acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 1993. Sony gained the IP for Lemmings from this acquisition, though only had two entries: the 2006 Lemmings for PlayStation consoles, and the mobile title Lemmings: The Puzzle Adventure in 2017. Sony eventually licensed the rights to Exient Entertainment,[94] who published the mobile title. Exient produced a 30th anniversary documentary of the history of Lemmings, released in February 2022.[95][96] Numerous clones of Lemmings were made. One of the first was The Humans, released for the Amiga in 1992. General game concepts have been included in the open source Pingus, where the player is required to safely guide penguins across landscapes using a similar array of tools.[97] Other similar games include Clones.[98] Yannick LeJacq of Kotaku, commenting on the 2014 game MouseCraft which incorporates elements of Lemmings and Tetris, speculated that games like Lemmings would not be very successful in the current gaming market, as the pace of the game is far too slow to satisfy most players.[99]

In 2004, Graham Cormode proved that deciding whether it is possible to complete a level of Lemmings is NP-hard.[100] Later, Giovanni Viglietta showed that the task is PSPACE-complete, even for levels where there is only one lemming to save.[101]

In 2010, it was announced that Lemmings would be ported to the iOS operating system by developer Mobile 1UP.[102] On 29 June 2010, Mobile 1UP reported that Sony Computer Entertainment Europe had presented them with a cease-and-desist letter, forcing them to halt development of the port.[103] In April 2011, Mobile 1UP has released a re-worked version of the work done in 2010 with a prehistoric setting (new artwork, sfx, music, levels) under the name Caveman, available for the iOS and webOS platforms.[104] Brutal Deluxe, the developer who did the porting of the Apple IIGS version of Lemmings, has released the games' source code.[105]

Lemmings has also been called a predecessor of the modern real-time strategy (RTS) video game genre. A 1991 Amiga Power article claimed that Lemmings "was the first major game to introduce the 'indirect-control' concept," an element that is now common in many RTS games.[106] Blizzard Entertainment developer Bob Fitch said that part of the inspiration for the first Warcraft game, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, was based on developing a competitive multiplayer RTS that combined elements of The Lost Vikings (which he had worked on) and Lemmings; Fitch said "We just went, 'Oh it's so cool when you see lots of Lemmings all over the place. Why don't we have lots of Vikings all over instead, and then the Vikings can fight each other."[107] Lemmings' introduction of RTS elements has been noted by fantasy author Terry Pratchett; in his novel Interesting Times, an army of golems is controlled in a fashion reminiscent of the Lemmings user interface. When readers asked if this was deliberate, Pratchett responded: "Merely because the red army can fight, dig, march and climb and is controlled by little icons? Can't imagine how anyone thought that... Not only did I wipe Lemmings from my hard disk, I overwrote it so I couldn't get it back."[108]

Lemmings was one of six games featured in a stamp series issued by the Royal Mail in 2020 to pay tribute to the United Kingdom's early video game industry.[109]

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February 06, 2023
lemmings, video, game, lemmings, puzzle, strategy, video, game, originally, developed, design, published, psygnosis, amiga, 1991, later, ported, numerous, other, platforms, game, programmed, russell, mike, dailly, david, jones, inspired, simple, animation, tha. Lemmings is a puzzle strategy video game originally developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis for the Amiga in 1991 and later ported for numerous other platforms The game was programmed by Russell Kay Mike Dailly and David Jones and was inspired by a simple animation that Dailly created while experimenting with Deluxe Paint LemmingsHome computer cover art by Adrian Powell 12 Developer s DMA Design Sunsoft SNES SMD Probe GG SMS Psygnosis CPC 3DO ZX Ocean Software NES Publisher s Psygnosis Sunsoft SNES SMD NES USA Sega GG SMS Atari Corporation LYNX Ocean Software GB NES EU Philips Media CD i Designer s David JonesProgrammer s David Jones Russell Kay Mike DaillyArtist s Gary Timmons Scott Johnston Mike DaillyComposer s Tim Wright Brian JohnstonPlatform s Amiga MS DOS Classic Mac OS Atari ST ZX Spectrum Amiga CDTV Acorn Archimedes PC 98 PC 88 MSX FM Towns Sharp X68000 Apple IIGS SNES PC Engine CD ROM Mega Drive Game Gear Amstrad CPC Master System NES Commodore 64 3DO Atari Lynx SAM Coupe Game Boy Philips CD i Amiga CD32 Microsoft Windows PlayStation J2ME LinuxRelease14 February 1991 AmigaEU 14 February 1991 1 NA 1992 MS DOSNA 1991 Classic Mac OSNA 1991 Atari STEU 1991 ZX SpectrumEU 1991 2 ArchimedesEU 1991 3 PC 98JP 1991 4 Amiga CDTVEU 1992 FM TownsJP 1992 5 X68000JP 1992 6 PC Engine CD ROM NA 1992 7 JP 1992 SNESJP December 1991 8 NA March 1992EU August 1992 9 Mega DriveNA 1992EU 1992 Game GearNA 1992EU 1992 Amstrad CPCEU 1992 Master SystemEU 1992 NESNA November 1992EU 19 May 1993 Commodore 64EU 1992NA 1993 3DONA 1993 LynxNA 1993 SAM CoupeEU 1993 10 Game BoyEU 1993NA August 1994 Philips CD iEU 1993NA 1995 Amiga CD32EU 1994 J2MENA 2005 11 Genre s Puzzle StrategyMode s Single player multiplayerThe objective of the game is to guide a group of anthropomorphised lemmings through a number of obstacles to a designated exit To save the required number of lemmings to win one must determine how to assign a limited number of eight different skills to specific lemmings that allow the selected lemming to alter the landscape to affect the behaviour of other lemmings or to clear obstacles to create a safe passage for the rest of the lemmings Lemmings was one of the best received video games of the early 1990s It was the second highest rated game in the history of Amstrad Action and was considered the eighth greatest game of all time by Next Generation in 1996 Lemmings is also one of the most widely ported and best selling video games and is estimated to have sold around 20 million copies between its various ports The popularity of the game also led to the creation of sequels remakes and spin offs and has also inspired similar games Many retrospective reviews have cited it as one of the greatest games of all time Contents 1 Gameplay 1 1 Two player mode 2 Development 3 Ports and remakes 3 1 Expansions 4 Reception 5 Legacy 6 References 7 External linksGameplay Edit Lemmings cross a bridge and tunnel through a rock formation in the Amiga version Lemmings is divided into a number of levels grouped into four difficulty categories 13 Each level begins with one or more trap doors opening from above releasing a steady line of lemmings who all follow each other 14 Levels include a variety of obstacles that prevent lemmings from reaching the exit such as large drops booby traps and pools of lava 15 The goal of each level is to guide at least a portion of the green haired blue robed lemmings from the entrance to the exit by clearing or creating a safe passage through the landscape for the lemmings to use 16 17 Unless assigned a special task each lemming will walk in one direction ignoring any other lemming in its way except Blockers falling off any edges and turning around if they hit an obstacle they cannot pass 18 A lemming can die in a number of ways falling from a great height drowning or falling into lava disappearing off the bottom of the level map being caught in a trap or fire or being assigned the Bomber skill Every level has a time limit if the timer expires the level ends and the player is evaluated on the number of lemmings rescued To successfully complete the level the player must assign specific skills to certain lemmings Which skills and how many uses of each are available to the player varies from level to level and the player must assign the skills carefully to successfully guide the lemmings 17 There are eight skills that can be assigned 16 Climbers climb vertically though fall down if they hit an overhang Floaters use a parachute to fall safely from heights Bombers explode after a five second timer destroying themselves and any destructible landscape in close proximity though not damaging other lemmings or traps Blockers stand still and prevent other lemmings from passing lemmings that hit a Blocker simply reverse direction Builders build a stairway of 12 steps Bashers Miners and Diggers dig horizontally diagonally downwards or directly downwards respectively 13 While the player is able to pause the game to inspect the level and status of the lemmings skills can only be assigned in real time Lemmings are initially released at a rate predetermined by the level from 1 to 99 The player can increase the rate as desired to a maximum of 99 and later decrease it down to but not lower than the initial rate The player also has the option to nuke all the remaining lemmings on the screen converting them to Bombers 13 This option can be used to abort a level when in a no win situation remove any Blockers that remain after the remaining lemmings have been rescued or end a level quickly once the required percentage of saved lemmings has been reached 16 The four difficulty groups Fun Tricky Taxing and Mayhem are used to organise the levels to reflect their overall difficulty 19 This rating reflects several factors including the number of obstacles the player has to surpass the limitation on the number of types of skills available to assign the time limit the minimum rate of lemming release and the percentage of lemmings that must be saved 17 Some versions have additional difficulty ratings with more levels in each Two player mode Edit In two player mode each player can only control lemmings of their own colour but attempt to guide any lemming to their own goal The original Lemmings also has 20 two player levels This took advantage of the Amiga s ability to support two mice simultaneously and the Atari s ability to support a mouse and a joystick simultaneously 20 Each player is presented with their own view of the same map on a vertically split screen can only give orders to their own lemmings green or blue and has their own base The goal is to get more lemmings regardless of colour into one s own base than the other player Gameplay cycles through the 20 levels until neither player gets any lemmings home 16 Development EditMike Dailly the first employee 21 of DMA Design and one of the programmers for Lemmings provided a detailed history of the development of the game entitled The Lemmings Story in 2006 20 David Jones founder of DMA Design has also commented on the development and success of Lemmings 21 Gary Timmons improved Mike Dailly s lemming walking animation left to make it appear less stiff The inspiration for gameplay came as a result of a simple animated character sprite in an 8 8 pixel box created by Dailly using Deluxe Paint 21 as part of development for Walker then envisioned as a sequel to Blood Money 20 Dailly was able to quickly produce an animated graphic showing his creations moving endlessly with additional graphical improvements made by Gary Timmons and other members of the DMA Design team to help remove the stiffness in the animation One member Russell Kay observed that There s a game in that and later coined the term lemmings for these creations according to Dailly Allowing the creatures to move across the landscape was based on a Salamander weapon concept for Blood Money and demonstrated with the animations 20 Levels were designed based on a Deluxe Paint interface which allowed several of the members to design levels resulting in hundreds of levels 21 There were several internal iterations of the levels each designer challenging the others Dailly pointed out that David Jones used to try and beat us and after proudly stabbing a finger at the screen and saying There Beat that we d calmly point out a totally new way of getting around all his traps and doing it in a much simpler method Oh he d mutter and scramble off to try and fix it They also sent internally tested levels to Psygnosis getting back the results of their testing via fax While most were solved quickly Dailly commented that Every now and again though the fax would be covered in scribbles with the time and comments crossed out again and again this is what we were striving for while we were designing the levels and it gave us all a warm fuzzy feeling inside 20 Each of the designers had a somewhat different style in their levels Dailly s levels often had titles containing clues to what to do such as It s Hero Time suggesting that one lemming had to be separated from the crowd and generally required the player to perform several actions at once Gary Timmons s levels were minimalistic with popular culture references in the titles and Scott Johnston s whose mother was the first voice of the lemmings levels were generally tightly packed Dailly was also responsible for the custom levels based on other Psygnosis and Reflections Interactive Amiga games including Shadow of the Beast Menace Awesome and Shadow of the Beast II These crossover levels also used music from those games though in ports these levels have been removed or altered to remove such references After they developed most of the hard levels they then created several simple levels either by copying the existing ones or creating new layouts as Dailly states This I believe is where many games fall down today they do not spend the time making a good learning curve Timmons is credited with the official drawings of the lemmings as necessitated by the need of Psygnosis for box cover artwork 20 Music was originally created by Brian Johnston Scott s younger brother who sampled bits of copyrighted music This had been common practice but at that point there was a growing awareness of music copyright Psygnosis asked Tim Wright to replace the offending tracks who often used arrangements and reworkings of classical and traditional music to avoid copyright problems 20 Music tracks in the game include Galop Infernal from Orpheus in the Underworld the music by Offenbach often used for the can can Rondo alla Turca from Mozart s Piano Sonata No 11 Dance of the Reed Flutes from Tchaikovsky s Nutcracker Suite Dance of the Little Swans from Tchaikovsky s Swan Lake Ten Lemmings a track that uses melodies from traditional song Ten Green Bottles Chopin s Piano Sonata No 2 the part used as funeral march Wagner s Bridal Chorus popularly known as Here Comes the Bride London Bridge is Falling Down the English folk tune Forest Green adapted into the hymn All Beautiful the March of Days the carol O Little Town of Bethlehem mixed with the melody from the film The Good the Bad and the Ugly She ll Be Coming Round the Mountain and How Much Is That Doggie in the Window 20 The two player option was inspired by then current games Populous and Stunt Car Racer DMA Design initially wanted to use a null modem connection between two machines to allow competitive play but ended up using the ability of the Amiga to have two mouse pointer devices usable at the same time and thus created the split screen mode 20 Ports and remakes EditThe popularity of the game on the Amiga led to its rapid porting to many other platforms and it is regarded as one of the most widely ported video games 21 22 Within a year of its release the game had been ported to Atari ST Sinclair Spectrum PC and SNES 21 David Jones stated that after porting the game to 20 systems he stopped keeping count of additional ports 21 Other commercial ports of the original game include 3DO Acorn Archimedes Apple IIGS Apple Macintosh CDTV Commodore 64 NES Sega Master System and Mega Drive PC Engine Philips CD i and Sharp X68000 14 In 1998 an open source and cross platform clone was also made called Pingus 23 The license to the Lemmings intellectual property had remained with Psygnosis which became part of Sony Computer Entertainment in 1993 but ultimately folded in 2012 leaving Lemmings as a Sony property Sony has used that to craft more modern remakes 24 In early 2006 Sony released a remake of Lemmings for the PlayStation Portable developed by Team17 It features all 120 levels from the original game 36 brand new levels as well as DataPack support similar to the Extra Track system featured in Wipeout Pure and a user level editor Every level in the game is a pre rendered 3D landscape although their gameplay is still 2D and remains faithful to the original game User levels can be constructed from pre rendered objects and distributed by uploading them to a PlayStation specific Lemmings online community 19 25 The soundtrack also marks the final video game score created by longtime composer Tim Follin after he announced his retirement from the industry in mid 2005 26 In October 2006 the game was ported by developer Rusty Nutz for the PlayStation 2 with use of the EyeToy 27 The basic change in the concept is that the player must stretch and use their limbs in the recorded picture to aid the lemmings 28 In 2007 Team17 produced a similar remake of Lemmings for the PlayStation 3 for download through the PlayStation Network The game has the similar graphical improvements as the PSP title as well as on line scoreboards and additional levels developed for high definition display but lacks the ability to create and share levels as the PSP version offers 29 Another remake Lemmings Touch was released for PlayStation Vita on 27 May 2014 developed by D3T Ltd 30 Sony studio Sad Puppy released a mobile friendly version of Lemmings for iOS and Android in December 2018 31 Platform Released Developer Publisher NoteAtari ST 1991 DMA Design PsygnosisMS DOS 1991 DMA Design PsygnosisZX Spectrum 1991 DMA Design PsygnosisPC 98 1991 DMA Design ImagineerMacintosh 1991SNES 1991 Sunsoft 32 PsygnosisCommodore 64 1992 DMA DesignCDTV 1992 DMA Design PsygnosisFM Towns 1992 4000Do Inc ImagineerSharp X68000 1992 BANDIT Inc ImagineerNES 1992 Ocean Software SunsoftGame Gear 1992 Probe SegaMaster System 1992 Probe SegaAmstrad CPC 1992 DMA Design PsygnosisMega Drive 1992 Sunsoft SunsoftNA JPSegaPALPC Engine 1992 Sunsoft Sunsoft3DO 1993 DMA Design PsygnosisNAElectronic Arts VictorJPAtari Lynx 1993 DMA Design Atari CorporationCommodore Plus 4 1993 33 TCFS 34 UnfinishedPhilips CD i 1993 DMA Design PhilipsSAM Coupe 1993 Chris White 35 Fred PublishingGame Boy 1993 Ocean Software ImagineerAmiga CD32 1994 DMA Design PsygnosisWindows 95 1995 Visual Sciences Psygnosis Included with Oh No More LemmingsOS 2 1995 36 Focus Studios Demo onlyApple IIGS 1997 Brutal Deluxe 37 UnofficialMSX2 1997 N I N I 38 PlayStation 1998 Psygnosis Psygnosis 39 Included with Oh No More LemmingsGame Boy Color 2000 J Wing Take Two 40 Included with Oh No More LemmingsJ2ME 2005 iFone A floppy disk containing Christmas Lemmings 1991 for the Amiga Expansions Edit Lemmings received some expansion packs following its launch Oh No More Lemmings originally released for the Amiga in 1991 both as a data disk or standalone game added five varying difficulties Tame Crazy Wild Wicked and Havoc each with 20 new levels 41 The game also features enhanced graphics and altered sound effects 42 The expansion was also ported to Acorn Archimedes Atari ST DOS Macintosh and SAM Coupe and the levels were made available with the Game Boy Color Microsoft Windows PlayStation and Sega Mega Drive versions of Lemmings 43 10 Oh No More Lemmings received generally positive reviews Dan Slingsby of CU Amiga found the game addictive calling the puzzles ingenious 41 and Peter Lee of Amiga Action praised the quality and difficulty of the levels 44 Stuart Campbell of Amiga Power was disappointed by the lack of fixes from the original game and Ed Ricketts of ST Format criticised the difficulty gradient of the levels and the price of the expansion but both ultimately gave positive reviews nonetheless 42 45 Christmas Lemmings also known as Holiday Lemmings was also released as a series of short games released between 1991 and 1994 The gameplay remains unchanged from the base game which is not required First released as Xmas Lemmings as two four level demos in 1991 and 1992 there were two later full retail releases on the Amiga and Atari ST in 1993 and 1994 both with an additional 32 levels 46 The games were well received Rob Mead of Amiga Format described it as funny frustrating and incredibly addictive despite being disappointed by the number of levels 47 and Will Greenwald of PC Magazine ranked it among the best Christmas video games in 2014 48 Reception EditReceptionAggregate scoreAggregatorScoreGameRankingsSNES 83 49 Review scoresPublicationScoreAllGame NES 67 GG 68 SNES 69 Amstrad ActionAmstrad 97 50 CrashSpectrum 91 13 Computer and Video GamesMaster System 92 51 Electronic Gaming MonthlyLynx 6 8 10 52 CD i 6 25 10 53 FamitsuSuper Famicom 35 40 54 IGNLynx 9 10 55 Next Generation3DO 59 Your SinclairSpectrum 91 15 MegaTechMega Drive 92 56 MegaMega Drive 90 57 Commodore ForceC64 97 58 AwardsPublicationAwardAmstrad Action2nd best rated game in the history of the magazine 50 Amiga Power2nd best Amiga game of all time 1991 60 Mega23rd best game of all time 1994 61 CGW12th best game of all time 1996 62 Edge82nd top game of all time 2007 63 Your Sinclair20th top ZX Spectrum game of all time 1993 by readers 64 Wirtualna PolskaThe best Amiga game of all time 2011 65 Next Generation8th top game of all time 1996 66 The original sales for Lemmings on the Amiga topped 55 000 copies on the first day of sales in comparison Menace sold 20 000 copies and Blood Money sold 40 000 copies cumulatively With all ports included Mike Dailly estimated that 15 million copies of Lemmings were sold between 1991 and 2006 70 In 2011 Luke Plunkett from Kotaku placed the figure at over 20 million 71 a figure which has been quoted as far back as 1997 72 At the time of its first release Lemmings received several high scores from gaming magazines with only the level of graphics and sound receiving some small amount of criticism 73 David Sears of Compute in his review of Lemmings for the PC stated that perhaps Psygnosis has tapped into the human instinct for survival in formulating this perfect blend of puzzle strategy and action 74 Amiga Computing stated that Lemmings is absolutely brilliant Psygnosis have managed to produce a game that is not only totally original but also features the kind of addicting gameplay that will keep the player coming back for more time and time again 75 A review from the Australian Commodore and Amiga Review ACAR stated that above all the concept is simple and the game is a lot of fun 76 Computer Gaming World stated that Not since Tetris has this reviewer been so addicted to or completely fascinated with a series of challenging puzzles follow the crowd and get Lemmings 77 In 1992 the magazine named it its Action Game of the Year 78 The game was reviewed in 1991 in Dragon by Hartley Patricia and Kirk Lesser in The Role of Computers column The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars 79 The Lessers reviewed the Macintosh version of the game in 1993 in Dragon also giving that version 5 stars 80 In 1994 Electronic Gaming Monthly complimented the Lynx version s large number of options and password feature and remarked Lemmings has always been a good strategy game and the Lynx version continues the tradition 52 The following year they reviewed the CD i version criticising that it has nothing but the obligatory full motion video intro to set it apart from the numerous ports of the game that had already been released over the past four years 53 GamePro made the same criticisms commenting that this former 16 bit puzzler isn t going anywhere new on the CD i 81 Next Generation s review of the 3DO version assessed that If you ve played any version you ve played this one too but if you haven t tried it this is one of the better ones and it s still one game that s addictive as hell 59 In 1996 Computer Gaming World declared Lemmings the 12th best computer game ever released 82 and that same year Next Generation declared it the 8th greatest game of all time and second only to Tetris in the puzzle genre 66 In 2004 readers of Retro Gamer voted Lemmings as the 21st top retro game with the editors calling it perhaps Psygnosis finest hour and a turning point in the puzzle genre 83 In 1991 PC Format named Lemmings one of the 50 best computer games ever The editors wrote Yes we know it sounds stupid but you will like it everyone else has 84 In 1994 PC Gamer US named Lemmings the 30th best computer game ever The editors called it one of the biggest puzzlers ever released for PC and cleaner and less complicated than its sequel 85 That same year PC Gamer UK named it the 25th best computer game of all time calling it a seminal title 86 In 1998 PC Gamer declared it the 21st best computer game ever released and the editors called it as fresh and addictive today as it was when it was first released 87 In 2018 Complex listed the game 70th on its The Best Super Nintendo Games of All Time 88 In 1995 Total ranked the game 81st on their Top 100 SNES Games summarizing The game that spawned a dozen imitators is still one of the best platform puzzlers available 89 Legacy Edit Sculpture of Lemmings in Seabraes Park Dundee near the original office of DMA Design Lemmings inspired several sequels including the Christmas Lemmings short games that were released between 1991 and 1994 and the 1991 expansion Oh No More Lemmings Stand alone sequels were Lemmings 2 The Tribes 1993 90 All New World of Lemmings 1994 14 3D Lemmings 1995 91 and Lemmings Revolution 2000 14 By mid 1995 Lemmings and its sequels had accumulated combined sales of more than 4 million units worldwide 92 Two spin off games were also made both in 1996 Lemmings Paintball 91 and The Adventures of Lomax 93 The intellectual property IP of Lemmings stayed with the initial publisher Psygnosis who were acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 1993 Sony gained the IP for Lemmings from this acquisition though only had two entries the 2006 Lemmings for PlayStation consoles and the mobile title Lemmings The Puzzle Adventure in 2017 Sony eventually licensed the rights to Exient Entertainment 94 who published the mobile title Exient produced a 30th anniversary documentary of the history of Lemmings released in February 2022 95 96 Numerous clones of Lemmings were made One of the first was The Humans released for the Amiga in 1992 General game concepts have been included in the open source Pingus where the player is required to safely guide penguins across landscapes using a similar array of tools 97 Other similar games include Clones 98 Yannick LeJacq of Kotaku commenting on the 2014 game MouseCraft which incorporates elements of Lemmings and Tetris speculated that games like Lemmings would not be very successful in the current gaming market as the pace of the game is far too slow to satisfy most players 99 In 2004 Graham Cormode proved that deciding whether it is possible to complete a level of Lemmings is NP hard 100 Later Giovanni Viglietta showed that the task is PSPACE complete even for levels where there is only one lemming to save 101 In 2010 it was announced that Lemmings would be ported to the iOS operating system by developer Mobile 1UP 102 On 29 June 2010 Mobile 1UP reported that Sony Computer Entertainment Europe had presented them with a cease and desist letter forcing them to halt development of the port 103 In April 2011 Mobile 1UP has released a re worked version of the work done in 2010 with a prehistoric setting new artwork sfx music levels under the name Caveman available for the iOS and webOS platforms 104 Brutal Deluxe the developer who did the porting of the Apple IIGS version of Lemmings has released the games source code 105 Lemmings has also been called a predecessor of the modern real time strategy RTS video game genre A 1991 Amiga Power article claimed that Lemmings was the first major game to introduce the indirect control concept an element that is now common in many RTS games 106 Blizzard Entertainment developer Bob Fitch said that part of the inspiration for the first Warcraft game Warcraft Orcs amp Humans was based on developing a competitive multiplayer RTS that combined elements of The Lost Vikings which he had worked on and Lemmings Fitch said We just went Oh it s so cool when you see lots of Lemmings all over the place Why don t we have lots of Vikings all over instead and then the Vikings can fight each other 107 Lemmings introduction of RTS elements has been noted by fantasy author Terry Pratchett in his novel Interesting Times an army of golems is controlled in a fashion reminiscent of the Lemmings user interface When readers asked if this was deliberate Pratchett responded Merely because the red army can fight dig march and climb and is controlled by little icons Can t imagine how anyone thought that Not only did I wipe Lemmings from my hard disk I overwrote it so I couldn t get it back 108 Lemmings was one of six games featured in a stamp series issued by the Royal Mail in 2020 to pay tribute to the United Kingdom s early video game industry 109 References Edit The Release Schedule Computer Trade Weekly No 323 United Kingdom 11 February 1991 p 14 Lemmings ZX Spectrum Demo Archive Lemmings ZX Spectrum Demo Acorn Archimedes ROM Archive Lemmings Acorn Archimedes ROM PC 98 ROM Archive Lemmings PC 98 ROM FM Towns ROM Archive Lemmings FM Towns ROM Sharp X68000 ROM Archive Lemmings Sharp X68000 ROM Turbografx CD English ROM Archive Lemmings Turbografx CD English ROM 死ぬ前にクリアしたい200の無理ゲー ファミコン amp スーファミ 200 Unreasonable Games You Want to Clear Before Dying Famicom and Super Famicom in Japanese My Way Publishing 10 October 2018 p 64 ISBN 9784865119855 The Release Schedule Computer Trade Weekly No 399 United Kingdom 10 August 1992 p 15 a b SAM Coupe ROM Archive Lemmings SAM Coupe ROM J2ME ROM Archive Lemmings J2ME ROM Psygnosis Box Equals Art Retrieved 25 December 2017 a b c d Crash issue 94 page 15 World of Spectrum Crash Retrieved 10 December 2014 a b c d Fox Matt 3 January 2013 The Video Games Guide 1 000 Arcade Console and Computer Games 1962 2012 2d ed McFarland amp Company p 169 ISBN 978 0786472574 Archived from the original on 2 April 2015 a b Lemmings Your Sinclair Archived from the original on 5 May 2013 Retrieved 10 December 2014 a b c d Atari ed 1993 Lemmings Instruction Manual Atari Lynx C398105 080 Rev A Atari pp 5 7 a b c Bramwell Tom 7 March 2006 Lemmings Eurogamer 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