When it first appeared in 1991 on the Amiga, Lemmings, developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis caused a bit of a sensation. The game involved trying to rescue a group of tiny little Lemmings by guiding them from the entrance trapdoor through the level to an exit point. The Lemmings were pretty dumb, and as soon as their feet hit the ground they start walking, and keep on walking over cliffs, into water, through traps and so on.

In order to avoid all the Lemmings perishing, the player had a number of skills available on each level that could be applied to a Lemming by hovvering the mouse cursor over one of the little fellers and clicking. Diggers, Miners and Bashers allowed vertical, diagonal and horizontal tunnels to be carved out of the landscape, climbers could scale vertical cliffs, and Droppers were given an umbrella to allow them to fall great heights. Blockers would stand still and make any Lemming which touched it turn around and walk in the other direction, whilst Builders could build a short diagonal bridge. Finally, the funniest skill was the Bomber. On giving this skill to a Lemming he would clutch his head and shout “Oh No!” in a squeaky voice. A countdown then appeared above his head, and when it reached zero he would explode, with a great popping sound, leaving behind a trail of pixels and a huge crater in the ground. Funnier still was the Armageddon button. If you had messed up a level, clicking on Armageddon would blow up every single Lemming on the screen, generally causing most of the level to become a mess of craters!

Despite being so small (little more than about 10 pixels high!) the little critters were very well animated, and despite their stupidity you felt really bad when you weren’t able to save them. The game was pretty big too, with over 100 levels to complete. Also worthy of mention was the music, being a collection of twee, irritating tunes such as “How much is that doggie in the window?”.

Oh No! More Lemmings was an expansion pack with another huge set of levels, and there was even a Christmas themed game called Holiday Lemmings, which gave all the little guys Santa suits.

In 1993 a proper sequel arrived in the form of Lemmings 2: The Tribes. Whilst the game was still a lot of fun, some of the magic was lost with the addition of far too many new skills. Whilst some were great fun (Super Lemming was really cool, flying around after your mouse pointer), too many were similar to other skills. The levels were also split into 12 graphically themed sections, each represented by a different tribe of Lemmings, such as Egyptian, Circus and Sports. The number of Lemmings you saved on each level dictated how many Lemmings you had on the next level, and gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded to show how well you did.

The third Lemmings game was entitled All New World of Lemmings (or Lemmings Chronicles in the US) and centred around just three of the 12 tribes from the previous game. The number of skills was cut right back, with pickup boxes containing tools that could be used by the Lemmings once they had been collected. It was originally planned to create expansion packs for the remaining 9 tribes, but these never arrived.

The Lemmings have had a bit of a rough time since then. Lemmings 3D on PC and PS1 was a doomed effort to bring them into the third dimension. The basic gameplay of the original Lemmings game didn’t transfer well, because it was too difficult to keep track of where the little blighters were, and digging tunnels and holes was hard to see also. There was also The Adventures of Lomax in Lemming Land, which was a simple platform game very similar in style to the first Rayman game.

A second attempt at a more 3D Lemmings game was Lemmings Revolution, where the levels were wrapped around a tower, much like the old C64 game Nebulus. This was pretty much the same game as the original Lemmings but with a harder to understand display method. Finally, there was Lemmings Paintball, which had so little to do with Lemmings I wonder why it was even released…

The Lemmings games have appeared on just about every home computer and console you care to mention. There’s even a version due for the PSP soon. As a footnote, there was a failed attempt to update the game for the PS2, but that’s another story…

This entry nearly brings us to the end of our Advent Calendar, but there’s one more entry left as a special treat, despite tomorrow being Christmas Day. Call in tomorrow to find out who it is!

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