Maybe I was just the perfect age - 12 - when the game came out, but I remember it as pretty much the most formative video game I've ever played. It truly blew my mind that you could have something that seemed so open, even to the extent of being able to modify the actual environment. Lemmings just seemed so different from everything else around, in a way that might be difficult to appreciate nowadays.<p>I must've played Sim City & Populous prior, but something about the platformer genre and the level of indirection combined perfectly to make this game genuinely unique.
Site seems to be down. Here's a mirror.
<a href="https://archive.is/t96Pg" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/t96Pg</a>
"But if you ever visit Perth Road in the centre of Dundee, you can see DMA Design’s old office at the far west end. A few hundred yards away is a park called Seabraes and here, in front of the entrance to Dundee’s digital media park, you can find a pillar with three bronze lemmings clambering up and over it."<p>News article with several pictures of the pillar: <a href="http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/dundee/gallery-lemmings-sculptures-find-their-way-home-to-dundee-1.115473" rel="nofollow">http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/dundee/gallery-lemmin...</a>
"Composer Tim Wright pulled Lemmings out of the fire with style, bouncily reinterpreting standards like Offenbach’s Galop Infernal and Ten Green Bottles, and adding a touch of class with Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Little Swans."<p>Since I was about five years old when my parents bought Lemmings, I remember pieces like "Dance of the Little Swans" as "Lemmings music".<p>I think it's a better choice than 60s/70s music would have been. It doesn't date, and it's less annoying to hear on repeat for four hours straight...<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=QwXthGJfHLc#t=390" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Qw...</a>
I once applied for a job working for DMA just before Lemmings came out and in the phone call Dave Jones described Lemmings to me. He sounded really excited about it. I thought it sounded totally mad and couldn't for a minute understand why they would leave behind their totally successful series of side-shooters for a bonkers game about suicidal rodents.<p>More fool me.
Two player lemmings was <i>crazy</i>:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAedz3nWn9E" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAedz3nWn9E</a><p>There was a kind of pixel preciseness with the original lemmings that contributed a lot to this being great, but that somehow seems to have got lost in newer versions..
Any comment on lemmings being suicidal in popular culture is incomplete if it doesn't credit Disney for chasing a few of the "nasty little rodents" off a cliff.<p><a href="http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp" rel="nofollow">http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp</a>
Great article. I enjoyed the Lemmings games a lot as a kid.<p><i>‘Lemmings 3 was a bit crap … more to end our commitment to Psygnosis than actually do a good game,’ admits Dailly.</i><p>You gotta give him credit for his honesty. Lemmings was one of many titles that didn't survive the transition to 3D unscathedly. I think it was because a lot of time went into the engine instead of cute handdrawn 2D graphics and map design. Also the 3D camera movements were finicky, while in 2D you could just scroll.
I'm waiting for a Remaster for years, we had Pingus a while ago and it seems the development is back to the track again. I hope Sony change their mind and make Lemmings again.<p>1 - <a href="http://pingus.seul.org/welcome.html" rel="nofollow">http://pingus.seul.org/welcome.html</a>
There's also "The Complete History of Lemmings" [1] for Mike Dailly's (the guy who inspired the game) take on the making of Lemmings.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.javalemmings.com/DMA/Lem_1.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.javalemmings.com/DMA/Lem_1.htm</a>
> Already a keen programmer, Jones used his £3000 redundancy cheque to invest in a top-of-the-range Amiga 1000 and begin taking software engineering classes,<p>If you were already a keen programmer, what would software engineering classes in the 80s have given you?<p>> to the chagrin of his parents, who saw a better future in his hardware expertise.<p>Perhaps rightly so, he could have invented mobile telephony for instance :)
Cache from Google (site unreachable at the moment): <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8O3HvdUM7QgJ:readonlymemory.vg/the-making-of-lemmings/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ie" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8O3HvdU...</a>
<p><pre><code> ... he also recalls it was partly funded by royalties
(75p per £25 sale) from DMA’s first two games
</code></pre>
They had 3% royalties on their two first games. It seems retrospectively incredibly low compared to what people currently get from app stores.
Ah, this brings back memories. My parents had acquired a second-hand Amiga 500, which we then hooked up to the green monochrome monitor from our Apple ][e (also acquired used several years previously) - we couldn't afford a 'real' monitor :)<p>The Amiga came with a big box of floppies, one of which was labelled 'Lemmings.'<p>I don't believe I've ever played Lemmings in color (I'm having trouble picturing it, actually), but it was still pretty amazing in monochrome. Though, my only basis for comparison at the time was the games I'd played on the Apple ][.
Feeling nostalgic for the soundtrack? This guy did a medley -> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz0_ZHEDZ-4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz0_ZHEDZ-4</a>
I played Lemmings 2 recently on an Amiga for the first time since about 1992.<p>There was something magical about that game.<p>They make great Halloween costumes also.