Oh No!

February 14, 2021 8:59 PM

30 years ago today, Lemmings was release upon the world. Born of a demonstration that a walk cycle could work with an 8-pixel tall sprite, this green-haired phenomenon grew to become one of the most ported games in history. The series eventually went on to spawn a sequel, a Christmas version, and a 3D version among others. Though the license has languished under Sony for the last decade or so (mobile game aside), take a moment today to remember these green-mop-headed folks and their trials and tribulation. And enjoy their songs along the way.
posted by Zargon X (35 comments total)

Lemmings is also the game that put DMA Design on the map. They're still around - but these days, they're better known as Rockstar North.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:11 PM on February 14, 2021 [14 favorites]

I haven't played Lemmings in 25 years, but I have launched a classroom activity within the last week with a hearty "Lwet's go!"
posted by aws17576 at 9:24 PM on February 14, 2021 [7 favorites]

One of my all-time favorites! Especially the two-player mode (SNES), many fond memories of playing that with my dad and sister...

At my wedding, we used the "Dance of the Four Swans" theme when the wedding party entered the reception. Not a fancy orchestral version, mind you, but the actual Lemmings soundtrack, complete with "let's go!".
posted by equalpants at 9:51 PM on February 14, 2021 [15 favorites]

thinking about how blown my mind was when I noticed that the Lemmings’ walk animation was pixel-perfect synced to their movement, and the feet stayed firmly in place onscreen, creating a really mesmerizing sort of caterpillar tread pattern as they walked in groups

also, Lemmings 2 was tragically underrated and forgotten
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:04 PM on February 14, 2021 [7 favorites]

Imagine being a child, and you want to beat the level you're on, but that requires blowing up one of your sweet little friends who is relying on you to take care of them. Imagine the anguish, imagine the tears.

Welcome to my childhood.
posted by meese at 10:10 PM on February 14, 2021 [19 favorites]

Mike Dailly, one of the founders of DMA Design, gave a great lecture (a "Classic Game Postmortem") at the 2019 Game Developers Conference (GDC). It's well worth the 50 minutes if you have an interest in Lemmings or classic computer games in general.
posted by ElKevbo at 10:18 PM on February 14, 2021 [6 favorites]

Let's go!
posted by fairmettle at 10:28 PM on February 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

Is this where I can share one of my favorite OC Remixes? The original is, like all music from Lemmings, fantastic. But this remix is DABOMB.
posted by linux at 11:26 PM on February 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

Sorry if this was already mentioned, but FYI these games appear to be playable in the browser at eg https://archive.org/details/lemmings_original_ms-dos_201705

That is the only one I tried but it worked for me.

There seem to be (all?) other editions available.

https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games?and%5B%5D=lemmings&sin=&sort=-downloads
posted by torii hugger at 12:49 AM on February 15, 2021 [7 favorites]

Did a brief stint at Clockwork Games just after they'd finished Lemmings 3D. The team told me there were loads of cheats and easter eggs they'd added, but they'd forgotten what they all were. Apparently there was a first-person shooter cheat in there, amongst others.
posted by davemee at 2:36 AM on February 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

these games appear to be playable in the browser

...and have been since well before in-browser DOS emulators became a thing. DHTML Lemmings has been online since 2004. Quote:

You will be needing a modern browser and a fairly fast PC to play this game. IE5.5+ or a recent Mozilla / Opera version and a 500+ MHz processor should do, but more power is better :)

posted by flabdablet at 3:24 AM on February 15, 2021 [6 favorites]

There was a dhtml version of the original someone made like 15 years ago with animated gifs and javascropt. it's probably elsewhere, but that was the first wow! browser moment I had.

Those psygnosis games though, shadow of the beast, killing game show. Some solid Amiga memories.
posted by lkc at 3:26 AM on February 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

Oh wow, I LOVED lemmings. It was so cool how their hair moved with their feet! I remember playing at my friends house in her tiny wee room so vividly, and her two big brothers coming in and trying to take over. Then her dad came up and shouted at them, but then he wanted to take over.

Can't remember if I'm mixing up with Worms, but also having to use this glossy-printed black on black code sheet to 'verify' the game because it was being pirated/shared too much? The idea being that could couldn't photocopy it...

Had a quick look at the version above - do you click on the action and then the lemming? Wasn't working for me but I was a bit distracted by remembering the music...
posted by sedimentary_deer at 3:28 AM on February 15, 2021

Yes, click the action first. The only actions that work are the ones with numbers above them.
posted by flabdablet at 3:38 AM on February 15, 2021

I haven't played Lemmings in 25 years, but I have launched a classroom activity within the last week with a hearty "Lwet's go!"

I'd never made the connection before now, aws17576, but the default proof-of-life from my code has always been for it to print out "Let's go!"

I remember the DHTML Lemmings landing too. I was working on the Javascript code for a set-top box web browser at the time and internally we wanted to use that as our ur-test case. We couldn't justify it to the management as it was too far from the programme guides that we actually needed to display, but kept checking in on it. I don't think we quite managed to get it running fully while I was there :-(
posted by amcewen at 3:43 AM on February 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

Aww, we loved this game. "Let's go!" became a permanent part of our family lexicon. Even better was when one of the kids woke up congested: "I've got a BLOCKER in my nose!"
posted by evilmomlady at 3:49 AM on February 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

(Also that first link was a very interesting article. Thank you.)
posted by evilmomlady at 4:03 AM on February 15, 2021

There is a plaque to this bit of videogame history at the old DMA Design offices in Dundee (right next to my old bus stop). The building is now a restaurant called "Wee Mexico".
posted by dill at 4:04 AM on February 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

I play the current iPad version a bit, which is sort of OK apart from the endless attempts to extract money or make you watch ads.
posted by Phanx at 4:08 AM on February 15, 2021

This game took up such a huge portion of my 90s, mostly by means of the Sega Game Gear. I haven't played it in at least 20 years, but just seeing this thread has brought back memories of almost all of the music.
posted by mystyk at 4:12 AM on February 15, 2021

Also, since the OP linked to a playlist for Lemmings 2, here's one for the original. Truly some of my best MIDI memories.
posted by mystyk at 4:29 AM on February 15, 2021 [4 favorites]

Imagine being a child, and you want to beat the level you're on, but that requires blowing up one of your sweet little friends who is relying on you to take care of them. Imagine the anguish, imagine the tears.

Welcome to my childhood.

There was a rule where I had to ask to play Lemmings after my mum decided she couldn't deal with her baby crying about lemmings.
posted by Merus at 7:01 AM on February 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is the only decent use case for the Mac touchbar, incidentally.
posted by mhoye at 7:11 AM on February 15, 2021 [8 favorites]

I was just thinking about this game within the past week. My 5 year old needs to play it! (I wonder if I can find a good Amiga version...)
posted by Catblack at 7:39 AM on February 15, 2021

mystyk - I let my personal bias show through a bit there, so thank you for giving everyone the full experience!
posted by Zargon X at 8:24 AM on February 15, 2021

After playing through Lemmings on an Amiga emulator this summer--and trying fruitlessly to get two mice recognized for the two-player mode--I called my mom to confirm that yes, she did sell the basement-dwelling Amiga 500 a few years back, and yes, I said it was ok.

I was pleasantly surprised when she mailed me the floppy disk, which had somehow escaped the classic computer liquidation. It is now framed on my wall.
posted by head full of air at 8:26 AM on February 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

Random Lemmings memory from my childhood: the sudden unexpected "666" level caused a bit of consternation in my relatively conservative household. We were allowed to finish the level, under direct parental supervision, to move on. Sometimes I think we were the Flanderses...
posted by traveler_ at 9:15 AM on February 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

Can we talk for a bit about how the most difficult set of levels was just ludicrously impossible, at least to my 10 year old self? I remember burning out somewhere around halfway through the intermediate difficulty levels, but it allows you to start the most difficult levels straightaway -- and that first level in the most difficult group of levels was just mind-bogglingly insurmountable.
posted by ropeladder at 10:11 AM on February 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

This was the first computer game we had in our house. I remember enjoying it, but my favorite was watching my little sister play. She's struggled all her life with depression and was often not okay. She played lemmings with absolute glee. It was so delightful to watch her joy in being the evil mastermind on hard levels or lose on purpose while cackling.
posted by Margalo Epps at 10:39 AM on February 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

There's statues in Dundee.

And to think that Dundee got a whole bunch of scrappy and innovative game programmers 'cos it was really easy to get a cheap ZX Spectrum nicked from the production line at the Timex factory …
posted by scruss at 11:49 AM on February 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

I loved Lemmings. One of the things I loved the most was the creativity. They gave you a bunch of tools you could use to solve a problem. And you could often solve it in a way that even the game designers didn't think of.

I'm not sure which version of Lemmings changed that. But it changed. Instead of a problem and a bunch of tools you could use to solve the problem in creative ways, the game changed so that there was just one, single solution and they clearly tested and reprogrammed each level to make sure that there wasn't any other solution except the exact one they intended.

Then I lost all interest in Lemmings.
posted by eye of newt at 12:31 PM on February 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

For those who miss rodents solving problems, may I recommend Timberborn. It is still in demo, and is not a great representation of actual beavers, who prefer to swim, not walk, but it's a pretty fun resource management game.
posted by hydropsyche at 2:34 PM on February 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

suddenly thinking about Creepers, another game published by Psygnosis that was like a less compelling version of Lemmings where you just sort of put stuff into the environment instead of directing the Lemmings themselves
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:25 PM on February 15, 2021

Ahhhh so many times where I would block all my Lemmings in a spot to keep them safe, built the perfect escape path for them, and went back to unblock them... just in time to watch the last four walk off a cliff. I loved that game. Then I got mom playing it and, well, dammit, we only had one computer...

My introduction to the game was at a friends house. We stopped there for coffee for a bit and right as we were leaving, he said “hey, check this new game out.” We were there for four more hours, already hopelessly addicted.
posted by azpenguin at 9:19 PM on February 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

Wow, thanks for the walk down memory lane!
Manny hours was spent on the family Amiga 500 playing this game.
Adds theme song to gaming playlist.
posted by skaggig at 7:53 AM on February 19, 2021