Lemmings
| Lemmings | |
|---|---|
| developer | DMA design |
| Publisher |
Psygnosis Sony Computer Entertainment |
| First title | Lemmings (1991) |
| Last title | Lemmings (2019) |
| Platform (s) | Windows , DOS , PlayStation , PS2 , PS3 , PlayStation Portable , 3DO , Acorn Archimedes , Amiga , Amiga CD32 , Amstrad CPC , Atari ST , CD-i , CDTV , C64 , FM Towns , Game Boy , Game Boy Color , Game Gear , Mega Drive , Atari Lynx , Mac OS Classic , NES , PC-98 , SAM Coupé , Master System , Saturn Sharp X68000 , SNES , PC Engine , ZX Spectrum , J2ME , iOS , Android , Palm OS |
| Genre (s) | Brain game |
Lemmings is a series of computer games of the developer DMA Design , which from 1991 by Psygnosis published. They were very popular, especially in the early 1990s, and still have a fan base.
The play lemmings are small creatures with green hair and blue suits. They are not particularly intelligent and will stubbornly walk straight until they encounter an obstacle, fall into a precipice, or come across placed objects that give them a new direction. It is the player's task to intervene in this automatism with various actions.
Gameplay
The player has to lead a horde of up to 100 lemmings from an entrance to an exit in each level . It is important to lead as many lemmings as possible past obstacles, chasms and traps so that a specified minimum number reaches the exit.
For this purpose, each lemming can be assigned special skills with a click of the mouse:
- Blockers, following lemmings change direction on him
- climber
- Parachutist
- Athlete, d. H. Climbers and parachutists
- Stair builder
- Miner, d. H. dig in different directions
- living time bomb
However, these abilities are only available in limited numbers. Most of the time, only certain skills are available for a level.
In the later versions there are different lemming “tribes”, each with different special abilities.
The most important and most difficult factor to master is timing. If z. B. march the lemmings towards an obstacle a few pixels wide that must be blown up so that they do not turn around and fall a few meters further into an abyss. B. one of the lemmings can be turned into a bomb that removes the obstacle. The explosion does not take place until five seconds after ignition and the lemmings are constantly on the move. One click at the wrong time can be enough and not enough lemmings survive to make the level.
If you want to cancel a level prematurely, you can click a self-destruct button, which starts a countdown, after which all the remaining lemmings explode one after the other like a small fireworks display and pop like champagne corks.
In order to shorten waiting times (e.g. until all lemmings have reached the exit), special acceleration functions were built in in later versions.
history
After DMA Design moved into their first office, they started developing the Walker game . Scott Johnson drew animations of characters with a size of 16 × 16 pixels for the game . As proof that larger characters are also possible with 8 × 8 pixels, David Railly then drew smaller animated characters, including bizarre animations of death. Gary Timmons drew other death animations, after which Russell Key said that one could make a game out of them. Key developed a demo version that he introduced to Psygnosis in September 1989.
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DMA employee Dave Jones decided to program the game. Timmons and Johnson developed the graphics. Psygnosis tested the levels and gave feedback. Dailly created four special levels, the graphics of which came from Amiga games by Reflections and Psygnosis. These were Shadow of the Beast 1 + 2 , Blood Money and Menace. A common misconception grew around the level All the 6's , which consists of three sixes. Originally it was not an allusion to the biblical number , as is often assumed , but an idea by Railly, who initially tried to create a level out of fives. He did not manage to bring the number of lemmings to be rescued to complete the level to 55 percent, but he managed 66 percent. He then developed the idea with sixs instead of fives. Only later did it become apparent that he could have changed the number of lemmings instead. Since he had settled the level in the Hell graphic set, he now thought of the biblical 666. These special levels are not included in all game versions.
Scott Johnson's younger brother Brian Johnson developed sound effects and music for the game, mostly using classical music . Gary Timmons developed the intro music. Scott Johnson's mother voiced the lemmings.
A two-player mode using a null modem cable was developed, which was rewritten to a split-screen mode. Because there were technical problems with more than one mouse used at the same time on the PC , this was only used with the Amiga and Atari ST.
The fast-forward function was used for the first time in the never-released arcade version. This was later integrated into Lemmings 2 .
In 2010, Brutal Deluxe, the developer who created the port for the Apple IIgs version of Lemmings, released the source code for the game (and other games of the era).
Platforms
The first Lemmings game was made for the Amiga . It was built on Atari ST , Atari Lynx , Macintosh , Commodore 64 , Acorn Archimedes , MS-DOS , Microsoft Windows , OS / 2 , SAM Coupé , ZX Spectrum , Schneider CPC , NES , SNES , Game Boy , Game Boy Color , Sega Mega Drive , Sega Master System , Sega Game Gear , PlayStation , PlayStation 2 , PlayStation 3 , PlayStation Portable , PlayStation Vita, Palm OS , iPhone and other systems ported. In 1993 a similar game called The Brundles was created for Atari 8-bit computers .
Game versions
- Lemmings (1991)
- Oh no! More Lemmings (1991; additional disc for Lemmings from 1991)
- Holiday Lemmings alias Xmas Lemmings (1991 to 1994; four Christmas special editions, 1991 and 1992 with only four levels and free of charge)
- Lemmings 2: The Tribes (1993)
- Lemmings 3 aka All New World of Lemmings aka The Lemmings Chronicles (1994)
- Lemmings for Windows (1995; Windows version ( Win32s ) of Lemmings and Oh No! More Lemmings)
- 3D Lemmings (1995)
- Lemmings Paintball (1996; offshoot)
- The Adventures of Lomax (1996; a platform game as an offshoot of the series)
- Lemmings Revolution (2000)
- Lemmings PSP (2006)
- Lemmings PS2 (2006)
- Lemmings PS3 (2007)
- Lemmings Tribes for J2ME- Enabled Cell Phones (2008)
- Lemmings Touch PS Vita (2014)
- Lemmings iOS (2019)
- Lemmings Android (2019)
Clones and variants
- Lamers ( DOS )
- In 1992 a Lemmings parody called Lamers was created . The aim of the game is to hit the small characters with weapons, such as B. a pistol to prevent from reaching the safe exit. The game was circulating in BBS circles at the time and at the end of 1992, along with other programs, was also available on disk in an issue of the magazine Disc-EDV-Report .
- In 1992 the Lemmings clone The Humans was created, in which Stone Age people have to get to the exit of the level in a certain time with the help of ladders, spears, torches, wheels, ropes and later with a witch doctor. In 1993 a successor for DOS and Amiga appeared. The third part followed in 1995 for DOS, Amiga (AGA). In 2009, Part 3 was re-released for Windows.
- In 1998, a lemmings clone named Pingus was released for the Linux , Windows and macOS operating systems , in which, as an allusion to the Linux mascot Tux , penguins are used instead of the lemming figures.
- Ottifanten Ostfriesen Lemmings in Not ( Windows 98 SE )
- In 2006 this Lemmings clone appeared with Ottifanten instead of Lemmingen, which go through 40 levels.
- Clones ( Windows )
- In 2010 the Lemmings clone called Clones was released, in which aliens get through the levels through 10 different morphs of their bodies. There are different game modes, a multiplayer mode, a ranking system, simple AI and a level editor.
- In 2015 MouseCraft appeared, in which mice have to use Tetris stones as a kind of ladder to get through 80 levels. There is a level editor.
Web links
- Lemmings series at MobyGames (English)
- Powerplay test report from February 1991
- Game engine written in Java for Lemmings and Oh No! More lemmings
- Extensive link collection
- Mike Dailly: The complete history of Lemmings (English)
- Oh no! More Lemmings as a browser game at the Internet Archive
