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09 Mar 2016
- 2
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08 Mar 2016
- 1
Tame level 4 - Downwardly Mobile Lemmings
If a young upwardly mobile person is a “yuppie”, does that mean a young downwardly mobile person is a “ydowny”?
Tame level 3 - Undercover Lemming
Double-Oh-Lemming.
Today’s level is longer but there’s still not a whole lot to it.
It’s just bashing.
Though I think if you don’t increase the release rate from 1, you’ll run out of time.
Even so, by that time you’re bound to have at least 50%.
I suppose failure proof levels are a good way to avoid discouraging the player early in the game but it still feels odd. You could definitely goof up and kill some lemmings in the first few levels of the first game. Oh well.
The music in this level is a kind of heroic tune that reminds me a bit of Christmas-y songs and also country western music somehow. It’s alright.
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06 Mar 2016
- 1
Tame level 2 - Rent-a-Lemming
Must have proof of income.
As with the previous level, this level is also astoundingly easy.
All you need to do is bash twice.
Off they go.
I suppose I was warned some levels would be easier.
The music in this level is this silly, bouncy tune. It’s pretty fun to listen to as well. The classic rock piano towards the end of the first loop is fun.
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05 Mar 2016
- 2
Tame level 1 - Down And Out Lemmings
It’s been a while, Amiga.
The first level starts out easy… in fact, really easy. There is no way for lemmings to die in this level unless you go out of your way, you need 50% of 50 lemmings, 4 minutes… I get that it’s the first level but wow.
There’s lots of ways to finish this level, but they’re all basically the same.
Just dig or mine or whatever you’d like to break through to the bottom floor.
There’s new intermission screen messages, at least!
As for the music, the first level’s music is this really catchy, upbeat tune. It’s really fun to listen to, though not quite as memorable as say, Pachelbel’s Canon from the first game.
I figured a new header image was in order, since we’re on a new game.
Second verse, same as the first!
They’re here. Oh no! More Lemmings!
What’s this? Well, Oh No! More Lemmings was a sequel or expansion pack of sorts–depending on your personal view–to Lemmings, containing 100 more levels which the credits ticker warns are tougher than the first–though it admits some are easier, too. The 100 levels are divided into five ratings this time–Tame, Crazy, Wild, Wicked, and Havoc–and except for exactly one exception, they all play the same as Lemmings The First. All of the original skills and rules are present and untouched in Oh No! More Lemmings, so if you wanted more Lemmings and just more Lemmings, well, here you go!
So aside from just having new levels, is anything different? Well, yes! The music is no longer a mix of lovingly rendered public domain music, it’s six original tracks by Tony Williams (converted to the Amiga by Brian Johnston, who did half the music for Lemmings), or, if you happen to be playing on the Acorn Archimedes, 25 tracks by Matt Furniss. There’s also new tilesets for the levels, and speaking of the levels, none of them are going to be level revisits! Yes, each level is completely original this time around so we won’t be seeing four different iterations of “We All Fall Down” or three iterations of “Just A Minute”.
Compared to Lemmings, I’m going into this one completely blind. I played a fair amount of Lemmings before deciding to blog about it, but I’ve only played the first few levels of Oh No! More Lemmings as well as the two included in Xmas Lemmings ‘91. I don’t know how tough Oh No! is going to get, but I guess we’ll find out soon!
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03 Mar 2016
- 10
Intermission Post #3 - Want to play Lemmings yourself?
Now that Lemmings Diary has finished up the first game in the series, you may be asking, “Well, what if I want to play Lemmings?”
Well, to get one thing out of the way, you can’t buy it. At least not in any meaningful way that supports the original developers. In in the mid 2000s, Psygnosis was absorbed into Sony, and by that time, Psygnosis had acquired the rights to the Lemmings trademark from DMA Design nearly a decade prior. So, despite the rise of storefronts like GOG and places like Steam selling old PC games re-tooled to work on modern computers, you’re likely never going to see the original versions of Lemmings in a legal buy-able form on PC, and even if you did, DMA Design (now Rockstar) wouldn’t see a cent–unless of course I’m wrong and they receive royalties of some kind?
Your best bet at least for now would be to emulate your port of choice or download a fan-made port, of which there are several!
For this blog, and for the sake of authenticity, I emulated the original Amiga version on FS-UAE, an Amiga emulator, but tracking down the right BIOS for the Amiga is a colossal pain and then setting up the emulator correctly is another kettle of fish altogether, not to mention finding clean Amiga games is an entirely separate kettle in and of itself. The other port-of-choice for would be the MS-DOS version, but DOSBOX isn’t super user friendly either, though in comparison it is way easier to set up than an Amiga.
Thankfully, ports of the game exist for modern systems. Currently, at least what I’ve found, the most click-n-play ready version of Lemmings is Neolemmix (thanks to tumblr user abcdeaf for bringing this one to my attention), and my second choice would be Lemini, which requires *gulp* Java and the Windows 95 port to run, but features that port’s replay feature–which plays back all your clicks in a given level up to the point where you won or lost the level, also allowing you to stop the replay and play from that point on–as well as its left/right feature, which allows you to click only lemmings walking left or right, especially useful for when they’re all clumped up in a tiny space.
If you don’t want to bother with all that, the most accurate home console port of the game is the SNES version, and emulating the SNES is easy.
The most recent port of Lemmings is actually the 2006 PS2 and PSP version, which contains the same gameplay, all 120 levels with minor edits (the Psygnosis themed ones are all gone), as well as the last video game soundtrack ever composed by Tim Follin. It also features around 30 unique levels which I may or may not play on here eventually, as well as a level editor which used to have network support.
But what about portable options? Well, most contemporary smartphones are capable of running a SNES emulator, or if you’re feeling brave, there’s even Android ports of DOSBOX and UAE (I recommend this one). However, the best portable port of Lemmings is far and away Lemmings DS, which has several types of control modes designed just for touch screens as well as custom level support.
Now get out there and play Lemmings!
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02 Mar 2016
- 3
Intermission Post #2 - Closing Thoughts on Lemmings The First
So now that I’ve finished the first game in its entirety in all its major forms, I feel like I should comment on its design and impact a little.
So, disclosure alert–I was born after 1991. I wasn’t really around during Lemmings’ boom. Even though I’ve been playing video games before I could actually talk, by the time I was aware of Lemmings, the series itself had kind of already come and gone, for all intents and purposes–the next game set to come out in the series by that time was Lemmings Revolution, which received middling reception and released without a ton of fanfare.
Still, despite the game showing its age by the time I found it, something about Lemmings drew me in. That seems to have been the case around the time of release as well! Lemmings was as new and fresh to me the first time I saw it in the late 90s as it was to people who saw it for the first time in 1991.
The premise is still intriguing to me today, and in my opinion Lemmings is the only game that has done the whole “this group of dozens of mindless things needs your help” thing right, probably because of how uncomplicated it is. I mean of course, the solutions themselves are complicated, but the lemmings literally can only move left and right and can only be guided by you and nothing else.
Solving a puzzle in Lemmings feels great. Looking at what you’re given, plotting out a solution, it’s superb. Even today I haven’t really played a puzzle game where solving it feels as good as it does in Lemmings, except for maybe Snakebird.
Still, not quite everything clicks with Lemmings, as close as it gets to perfect. Having to play an entire level over again because of one mistake obviously isn’t very much fun or very encouraging, especially when there’s plenty of variables as to what caused that mistake and how to avoid it. Additionally, when there’s a bunch of Lemmings clumped up together, getting a lemming to act in the direction you want is basically a coin toss. I have to imagine there were a lot of complaints about those things at the time because those two things were specifically fixed in later ports, such as the Windows 95 port.
And of course, my personal bonnet bee, the level revisits. They were the lowest part of the game for me even ignoring the above criticisms, because they just felt lazy and uninspired. I groaned whenever one came up and at one point I contemplated skipping them entirely. Not even making a post about them, just going from Taxing 14 to Taxing 16 because Taxing 15 was a level revisit.
Despite these complaints though, Lemmings is absolutely a solid game, and it’s a little sad thinking about how… non-existent it is today. It really does feel like one of those games that should’ve endured into present day but it just somehow didn’t. The property being owned by a company that manufactures game consoles probably doesn’t help because Lemmings would do perfectly on a smartphone or touch device–in fact, one of the best fan-made ports of Lemmings out there, at least in my opinion, is this port of it to the Nintendo DS. There is a version of Lemmings on the PS Vita, but er… well, it’s not great.
Speaking of ports, I have one more intermission post for you before we move on to Oh No! More Lemmings.
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01 Mar 2016
- 7
The funny thing is, when I was a kid, I managed to move the exclamation point over a few places when reading advertisements. So I would read the title as "Oh! No More Lemmings". I don't know what I was thinking, what kind of game would that even be?
kickyourasciiLemmings except you set traps as some invisible AI controlled player tries to play the level normally, ideally.