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'''Lemmings''', a computer game developed by DMA Design (now Rockstar North) and published by Psygnosis in 1991, was one of the most popular computer games of its time. Several games magazines of the time awarded the game maximum review scores.
Psygnosis, also known for the ''Wipeout'' series, had its greatest success in ''Lemmings''. Famously, the concept for ''Lemmings'' came from an animation created by Mike Dailly over a lunchtime, to prove a point about how small a character could be on screen.^[1]
The game was unique and based around a concept previously untried. In the original Commodore Amiga version, there are 120 levels, and on each level, the player must guide a group of up to 100 lemmings (or 80 in many versions, such as DOS and Windows) home by giving individual lemmings various commands. Each level dictates a required number of lemmings to be saved, giving the player the possibility, often the necessity, of sacrificing some lemmings for the greater good. The "lemmings" of the game are small, green-haired humanoid beings that mindlessly walk ''en masse'' into any danger in their path, following the popular myth that real lemmings behave in a similarly suicidal fashion.
Of the numerous sequels the only one to achieve the success of the first was '', which added twelve specialist tribes of lemmings, each with their own type of level and specialist workers.

Contents

Gameplay

Two-player mode

Development

Ports

PlayStation portable remake

EyeToy remake

Sequels

Allusions

Songs

Trivia

Screenshots of different ports

References

See also

External links

Gameplay

''Lemmings'' is divided into a number of levels. Each level consists of one or more entrance points and one or more exits. The goal is to guide a certain percentage of "lemmings" (bipedal creatures with green hair) from the entrance to the exit. Unless assigned a special task, each lemming will walk in one direction ignoring any other lemming in its way (save for Blockers), falling off any edges and turning around if they hit an obstacle they cannot pass. They die if they fall from a great height, fall into water, lava or off the map, or get caught in a trap; they also die after being assigned the bomber skill.
To successfully complete the level, the player must assign certain lemmings specific skills. The quantity of skill assignments of each type is generally limited, requiring the player to best use the skills to solve each level. The eight skills are as follows:
;Climber:Climbers will not turn around if they hit a wall, but will climb up it.
;Floater:Floaters, when falling, will open an umbrella to slow their rate of descent, allowing them to survive falls from any height (provided they land on ground).
;Bomber:When assigned the Bomber skill, the lemming will continue what it was doing for 5 seconds (indicated by a countdown timer above its head). When the timer expires, the lemming stops, undergoes a "nightmarish headache" (according to the game manual), clutches its head, exclaims, "Oh No!" and explodes. The explosion carves out a small amount of the landscape where the lemming stood.
;Blocker:A Blocker will stand in one spot and reverse the direction of any lemming that approaches.
;Builder:When given the Builder skill, the lemming will construct a stairway of no more than twelve bricks, rising in the direction he was traveling, with audible warnings when it is nearly out of bricks to allow the player to quickly reassign the task if a longer bridge is needed.
;Basher:When assigned Basher skill, the lemming will plow horizontally through any destroyable landscape and only stop if he breaks through to an open area or encounters indestructible walls.
;Miner:The Miner is similar to the Basher, but digs downward at an angle, using a pickaxe instead of bare paws.
;Digger:The Digger is also similar to the Basher, but digs straight downward, also using bare paws.
A lemming given one of the Builder, Basher, Digger, or Miner skills can be reassigned to a different skill at any time during their job; Climber and Floater skills remain with the lemming through the level, Blockers cannot be reassigned except to Bombers, and Bombers cannot be reassigned at all.
The player can adjust the rate of entry for the lemmings from the minimum set for the level up to 99, the faster release rate. The player also has the option to "nuke" all the remaining lemmings on the screen, converting them all to Bombers, either to quickly forfeit in order to retry a level or to remove any Blockers that remain after the rest have been rescued.

Two-player mode

The original Amiga ''Lemmings'' also has 20 two-player levels. This took advantage of the Amiga's ability to handle two mice simultaneously. 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 had their own base. The goal is to get more lemmings (regardless of color) into one's own base than the other player. Gameplay cycles through the 20 levels until neither player gets any lemmings home. The Atari ST also has a 2-player mode, one player using the keyboard or the joystick, and the other using the mouse.
Two-player levels are also present in the Sega Genesis and Super NES versions, along with some levels unique to those versions and produced by Sunsoft, their developer.

Development

Mike Dailly has provided a detailed history of the development of ''Lemmings'' entitled "The Lemmings Story".
Originally, the concept of the gameplay results as a quick demonstration of being able to create an animated character in a 8x8 pixel box as part of development for ''Walker'', a sequel to ''Blood Money''. Dailly was able to quickly produce an animated graphic showing his creations moving endlessly, with additional graphical improvements made by other members of the DMA Design team. One member, Russell Key, 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.
Levels were designed based on a Deluxe Paint interface, which allowed several of the members to design levels. There were several internal iterations of the levels, each designed challenging the others. Dailly pointed out that Dave 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 comment's 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. Each of the designers had notable features in their levels: Dailly's level names generally clued the player to what to do (such as "It's Hero Time", suggesting a single lemming was needed to complete) and generally required the player to perform several actions at once, Gary Timmons's levels were minimal with popular culture references in the title, and Scott Johnston's levels were generally tightly packed. Dailly was also responsible for the "custom" levels based on other Psygnosis and Reflections Interactive Amiga games, such as ''Shadow of the Beast'', ''Shadow of the Beast II'', and ''Awesome''. After they developed most of the hard levels, they then created several simple levels either by copying the existing ones or created new layouts; as Dailly states, "This I believe is where many games fall down today, they don't spend the time making a good learning curve."
Music was created by Brian Johnson, Scott Johnson's younger brother, and Scott's mother was the first voice of the lemmings. Timmons is credited with the official drawings of the lemmings, as necessitated by the need of Psygnosis for box cover artwork.
The two-player option was inspired by then-present games ''Populous'' and ''Stunt Car Racer''. They 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.

Ports

:''See also: Comparison of Lemmings ports''
The popularity of the game on the Amiga led to its rapid porting to many other platforms, and is considered to be one of the most widely-ported video games of all time, together with ''Pac-Man'' and ''Tetris''.
Known ports include: 3DO, Acorn Archimedes, Amstrad CPC, Apple IIGS, Arcade (prototype only), Atari Lynx, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga CD32, Commodore CDTV, DHTML, MS-DOS, Hewlett-Packard HP-48 series, Macintosh, Mobile phone, Nintendo Famicom (NES), Nintendo Game Boy, Nintendo Game Boy Color, Nintendo Super Famicom (Super NES), Nintendo DS ^[2], OS/2 (demo only), Palm, Philips CD-i, SAM Coupé, Sega Game Gear, Sega Master System, Sega Mega Drive, Sinclair Spectrum, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Playstation 3, PlayStation Portable, TI-82, TI-83 plus, TI-89, TI-92, UIQ, Windows and Javascript ^[3]
While all ports share the same basic characteristics of the game, there are a number of significant differences. For the NES and Game Boy versions, a lemming will only perform actions given to him at specific spots. This results in a delay of the action being carried out, as opposed to an immediate response that occurs in the original game.
In the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis version of ''Lemmings'', an additional 60 levels are available, some of which are conversions of ''Oh No! More Lemmings'' levels. Some other ports also include additional levels, unique to their respective systems (for example, the Super NES port includes a new difficulty of five levels known as Sunsoft, which is also the name of the company that ported and published that particular version).
In some ports, the levels are altered (possibility out of the company policy of the console maker for which the port is for). For example, in the Super NES version, the word "HEAVEN" is replaced with "PARADISE" in levels where it appeared previously. (The title of the level "Heaven can wait (we hope!!!)" has been changed to "Paradise can wait (we hope!!!)".) Furthermore, the 666 level has been altered to spell out "おはよう!" ("ohayō", meaning "good morning") in Hiragana. This is most likely due to Nintendo's strict family-value policy in which they imposed until the late nineties.
Other differences include:

★ Mouse option - Obviously lacking for some systems, usually making the game harder to play

★ Two-player levels - Ported only to the Super NES, the Mega Drive/Genesis and the Atari ST

★ Graphics - Some ports (primarily Macintosh and Windows) had improved resolution compared to their DOS counterpart.

★ Fewer levels - Some ports only have 100 levels

★ Smaller levels - The maximum level width is shorter on some ports, altering certain levels

★ Maximum number of lemmings in a level - This varies from 14 to 100

★ Nonfunctional traps - On some ports the traps were visible but did not work (e.g. Amstrad CPC port)

★ Intro movie and ending credits - Missing or different in different ports

★ Background music - Though the melodies are basically the same, the overall sound of the music and the order in which the tracks play differ in most ports

★ Availability of map thumbnail or release rate buttons

★ Availability of fast forward button or action replay mode - Options not included in the original Amiga version, although featured in some ''Lemmings'' sequels
The arcade game prototype, made by Data East, had the 666 level removed, and had a conversation of a Data East employee and a Psygnosis programmer about the 666 level, allusions to hell and heaven, and the "MENACING!!" level (see ''allusions'' below).

PlayStation portable remake

In March 2006, Sony released a remake of ''Lemmings'' for the PlayStation Portable handheld console, 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 "UserLevel" 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. UserLevels can be constructed from pre-rendered objects, in a similar manner to unofficial level editors such as ''LemEdit'' for DOS ''Lemmings'' and ''LemmEd'' for Amiga ''. UserLevels can be distributed by uploading them to an exclusive Lemmings online community.
The game was released for Japan on March 9, 2006, for Europe on March 10, 2006, and for US/Canada on May 23, 2006.

EyeToy remake

The game was recently also announced for EyeToy - the basic change in the concept is that the player must stretch and use his/her limbs in the recorded picture to aid the lemmings.^[4] The Eyetoy mode is developed by another UK developer Rusty Nutz [1] and was released in October 2006 as part of the PSP -> PS2 port.
The main PS2 version was a port by Team17 from the original PSP version. This version also contains a level editor that allows user-created levels to be uploaded and shared with others. Levels can also be transferred to other PSPs.
Screenshots of a Playstation 3 version have been leaked on http://www.ps3forums.com, detailing the interesting night levels.

Sequels

★ ''Xmas Lemmings'', also known as ''Holiday Lemmings'' (1991 - 1994) is a series of two small demos of ''Oh No! More Lemmings'', and two full games with their own demos, with Christmas music and snow levels.

★ ''Oh No! More Lemmings'' (1991) - expansion with 100 more levels.

★ ''Covox Lemmings'' - a promotional variant released with Covox sound cards, the game is identical to ''Lemmings'' but contains a "Covox" level and seven more levels not found in the original game.

★ '' (1993)

★ ''All New World of Lemmings'' (1994) - ''The Lemmings Chronicles'' in North America, also referred to as ''Lemmings 3''

★ ''3D Lemmings'' (1995)

★ ''Lemmings Revolution'' (2000)

★ ''Lemmings'' (2006) was released for the Sony Playstation 3 video game console via PlayStation Network download.
Two other ''Lemmings'' games were released, although these had entirely different gameplay. These are:

★ ''Lemmings Paintball'' (1996) - A puzzle/action game

★ ''The Adventures of Lomax'' (1996) - A platform game

★ ''The new Lemmings will be released 12/7/2007 for the PS3. Gametrailers website

Allusions

Main articles: References in Lemmings level names


★ In the versions for Amiga, DOS, Macintosh, and Atari ST, each level difficulty rating (Fun, Tricky, Taxing, and Mayhem) had one level with its own unique graphics and music. Each of these levels borrowed the graphics and music from another Psygnosis title. The levels are:

★
★ Fun: "A Beast of a Level" used the graphics from ''Shadow of the Beast''.

★
★ Tricky: "MENACING!!!" used the graphics from ''Menace''.

★
★ Taxing: "What an AWESOME Level" was based on ''Awesome''.

★
★ Mayhem: "A BeastII of a Level" was taken from ''Shadow of the Beast II''.

★ The unique levels were removed from later versions (''Lemmings'' for Windows, ''Lemmings'' for Game Boy Color, and the ''Lemmings'' which came with ''Lemmings Paintball'').
★ They have been restored for ''Lemmings PSP'', albeit with the landscape style changed to match that of the other levels, and the unique music removed.

★ There are also two levels, which share the same layout, where the word "heaven" is painted near the top of the screen with an arrow pointing to the exit. The player must build a large, staircase-like bridge to make it to the exit, possibly a subtle allusion to the Led Zeppelin song Stairway to Heaven. It has also been suggested that this is a possible Meat Loaf reference to the song ''Heaven Can Wait'', as the second occurrence of this layout is given the title, "Heaven can wait... we hope!!"

★ It is of note that the word "Heaven" has been removed from the PSP remake of the game, replaced instead by two hanging cages.

★ In the expansion/sequel ''Oh No! More Lemmings'', many of the level titles are allusions to pop culture.

Songs

At the time of ''Lemmings'' creation, there was a growing awareness of music copyright. Therefore, most of the level themes are arrangements of classical and traditional (i.e. public domain) tunes.

★ Classical pieces

★
★ "The Galop from Orpheus in the Underworld" (the music often used for the can-can)

★
★ "Rondo a'la Turk" (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

★
★ Twang - A song that uses melodies from traditional song "Ten Green Bottles", Chopin's funeral march and Wagner's "Here Comes the Bride".

★ Traditionals

★
★ "London Bridge is Falling Down"

★
★ a christmas carol called "O Little Town of Bethlehem" - mixed with a melody from the movie ''The Good, the Bad and the Ugly''

★
★ The English folk tune "Forest Green" which has been adapted into the hymn "All Beautiful The March Of Days" and the carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem"

★
★ "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain"

★
★ "Mary Had a Little Lamb"

★ Other DMA/Psygnosis games (see also ''Allusions'')

★
★ Amiga's ''Puggs in Space'' animation/demo (demo's main character was later used in another Psygnosis game).

★
★ ''Awesome''

★
★ ''Menace''

★
★ ''Shadow of the Beast''

★
★ ''Shadow of the Beast II''

★ Other

★
★ "Babyface"

★
★ "My Old Man (Said Follow the Van)"

★
★ "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?"

Trivia

★ At the height of the popularity of Lemmings, Eric W. Schwartz, the most famous Amiga animator of the time, created the Anti-lemmings demo, where Lemmings are being shot in a humorous way.

★ Lemming fan stories from the community^[5] are numerous, humorous stories include the idea of being born from cabbages due to their hair, and an 'evil lemming' spin off that involves farmers being chased by lemmings with pitchforks.

★ The voice of the lemmings were provided by background artist Scott Johnston's mother.¹

Screenshots of different ports

References

1. The Complete History of Lemmings
2. Lemmings DS
3. DHTML Lemmings
4. E3 2006: Lemmings "Nix"
5. Lemmings Universe

See also

★ Pingus

★ CLONES

External links

★ The Lemmings Solution — Screenshot solutions for many Lemmings games

★

★ Lemmings Universe — Lemmings information, pictures, news, and walkthroughs

★ The Lemmings File Archive — ''Lemmings'' downloads and level packs

★ The Complete History of Lemmings — Mike Dailly's page

★ Archive of Lemmings game materials

★ A review of Lemmings published in ''Compute!''

★ An abbreviated, DHTML version of Lemmings

★ ''Portions'' of manual for the original Amiga version

★ Official site of Lemmings for Palm OS

★ Lemmings on thehouseofgames.net

★ Stop-motion animation film on Lemmings

★ Intro animation from the Amiga version

★ Remake of original DOS game for Windows XP

★ The Complete History of Lemmings (Making of)