Lemmings
Mega Cruel Game #6
Type of Game
A socio-cultural experiment used to quantify our intelligence, but above all to determine our propensity for sadism.
Release date on our machines
March 1991 for the Atari ST, and 1991 for the DOS version. DOS has always been more approximate. Right? Why am I saying that? I don't know.
Developer
DMA Design Limited, but you're bound to know them, since they're called Rockstar today.
Publisher
Psygnosis Limited, the oooowl, THE PRETTY OOOOOWL!!!
Lemmings: unavailable anywhere, and it's driving my flamethrower insanely mad.
My best mate Randall Geyser had a hell of a collection of Atari ST games, though. Thanks to his brother, who was five years older, the game library existed long before we could write our names, and continued to grow without us having to ask for anything. I don't know if a kid could dream of anything better. Well, once you've ticked the boxes for not too unsanitary housing, not too dysfunctional family, not too much food shortage, and several other essential criteria. But since the subject is too serious for this kind of text, let's assume that you couldn't ask for anything better than to have new Atari ST disks raining down on you every week. When we were too scared of the Whales in Bubble Bobble, the Death in Gauntlet II, or couldn't take dying in Rick Dangerous 2 anymore, we often burned our last brain cells on Lemmings. This often meant that we passed two or three levels, and inevitably ended up sacrificing our little subjects, loyal refugees? Fellow creatures? Slaves? I never knew, let's forget about it. We killed them in every way possible just for the fun of it. Then we ruined our health on that horrible Moktar game. Logically, if we listen to the eternal detractors of video games, we would have gone on to become psychopaths, planting bombs wherever we could and torturing kittens and children at every opportunity. We did torture the Lemmings in the game (not real animals, mind you), but that was it. I don't even squash millipedes anymore, so... let's skip the doom and gloom. I also played alone on my dad's computer.
PEGI HIP
Lemmings, not Moktar for God's sake, almighty Lord Jesus in heaven. Without Randall to entertain me, or rather without Randall to mess with my concentration, I took it much more seriously and made quite a bit of progress before stumbling upon puzzles that seemed far too difficult for my little brain to solve. I still went through a pretty intense period of addiction, which lasted two or three school holidays, or twelve millennia in kid time. When I wasn't playing, I still kept working out various strategies on paper in the hope of completing this or that level. I think I also drew a few levels that came out of my imagination, like a hypothetical DLC, even though the concept of DLC wouldn't exist for another four years in my circle. I even stopped playing Taipei and The Incredible Machine, to mention only the ‘puzzle’ games installed on Windows 3.1! At least until I got so bored that I got tired of them. That I have had got tired of them? Oh dear. Tough grammar. My brain stayed small, and all that... Other more modern games had been calling to Randall and me for a while. The unfathomable stupidity of Lemmings must have contributed to my giving up, though.
Hours of torture to endure
Rescuing little characters in increasingly tricky locations, granting them various skills that interact directly with the level design. How awesome is that? That heart-warming feeling of satisfaction when you free enough of those silly creatures to reach the next level is something you don't find every day. The harder we struggle, the more dopamine we get with each victory. So we dive in, sometimes knowing immediately what to do, sometimes trying things out at random, and sometimes messing up completely. Among the roles that can be assigned to our beloved Lemmings are the blocker, who prevents his fellow Lemmings from moving forward, the horizontal digger, the vertical digger, the diagonal digger, the wall climber, the stair builder, the one who cushions his fall with an umbrella...
And finally the one who blows himself up — a fate also reserved for blockers once their mission is accomplished, because... well, they're even more stupid than the others.
There are quite a few options for braving the thousand dangers that lie in wait for our protégés. They encounter more and more obstacles and traps in the form of chasms, lava lakes, giant flamethrowers, indestructible walls, or rather, walls that cannot be dug through... Not to mention the totally twisted paths you have to trace to get to the exit. After a certain point in the game, progressing requires a good deal of pre-planning and becomes inaccessible to certain IQ levels. But let's keep an open mind, we're already hurting the Lemmings enough as it is. Did I mention that after a while, I couldn't complete a single level? Well, there you go.
Slowing down the appearance of these mindless creatures can help, or in rare cases, make things even more miserable for us. I think the graphics are pretty cool for the time. I was still playing it in 1997/1998 and I still have both my eyes, so yes, it's fine. The Lemmings only display seven and a half pixels, but their animations always seemed very smooth to me. Four years later, Worms wasn't doing much better. In fact, it was worse in some respects. Both games have a very similar atmosphere, both super funny and ultra-stressful. It's a combination that always delighted my expectations as a perfectly normal kid, albeit a slightly depressive one. The settings could almost have been swapped between the two titles.
Their sense of immensity, the rugged terrain, the often similar themes, such as hell, for example. Or the desert, for those who still believe I could have become a Satan-worshipping serial killer. It just occurred to me as I'm writing this, but sending Lemmings from one end of an abandoned car scrapyard to the other, avoiding mines and airstrikes, how cool would that be? Pitting angry earthworms against each other in a maze full of footbridges, crevasses and flaming spinning tops? Um, who's developing this crazy crossover? Sorry, I'm bringing myself back down to Earth with my game concepts that no one cares about. There are 120 levels in total, some of which come in several versions, each more difficult to complete than the last, sometimes offering us a more limited range of skills to use on the Lemmings, or simply forcing us to save more individuals.
The settings alternate between grassy earth, rocky deserts and Corinthian columns, pink marble, hellish furnaces, metallic worlds, as well as a single occurrence of a forest, a bloody and purulent hell, and finally organic chaos. Roughly speaking, that is. Today, when I see the big metal screws with the red light effect on them, the cables covered with vegetation, the huge silver crystals, I almost have an epileptic seizure of happiness! Luckily, I never thought about this game while driving. Which is bound to happen now that I've written that sentence. Farewell! That said, nothing beats the demonic pig's head door that spits flames. That Proustian madeleine filled with Milky Way spread and dipped in chocolate Candy Up that she gives me, that one!
Ooh-hoo-hoo-hoo! I want to turn myself into a stupid green-haired elf just to get through there! HAHA! All that just to die by falling on giant blades because the guy in front didn't have any more brick steps in his bag. In short: the legendary atmosphere of this game transcends its demanding but addictive gameplay. This crazy mix has made it a resounding, timeless success, and insert the third glowing compliment of your choice. And we're not skimping on baseless claims, that's life.
Return of Vibe
I have very few memories of the soundtrack. So much so that I never included it in my mega nostalgic video game playlist. Which is odd, when I think back to all the time I spent playing Lemmings. Why can't I remember anything about the music? Even on Atari ST, we got to hear it. On my father's 486, he may have forced me to turn off the sound. Did he even have speakers connected to it? I'm not sure. We are treated to seventeen tracks nonetheless. Ignoring the covers of well-known anthems, which I find a bit tedious, the rest sends pretty rainbows into my ears. Especially in the DOS version (on Atari ST, it's more complicated, sorry for Randall's computer). There are cute compositions, and others that are more creepy. Just like the artwork. In fact, I think it finally strikes a nostalgic chord with me. Something very slight, but still there. And it's getting stronger. YES! So good! It all comes back to me! Well, well! Another epileptic fit, eh! Here we go, just a few more files to add to my playlist! Let's call it a successful day. Oh, I almost forgot to share my favourite. This one, Lemming 2. The composers Tim Wright and Brian Johnston must have been very inspired. Wait, Tim Wright? The Tim Wright from... OH! THE Cold Storage that changed my life by composing the soundtrack for Wipeout! I just keep discovering crazy things with those good old Lemmings! But let's get back to Lemming 2: the second track played by the game, no matter what stage you were on. It changed all the time because, thanks to passwords, you could pick up where you left off the day before. But honestly, that crazy bass line, those rusty pipes you hit with a spanner. And the melody straight out of a space shooter! It doesn't work at all, which is why it's so wonderful. I love the early nineties and their slapdash approach to everything, praying that it would work. Nine times out of ten it would fail, but when it worked... WOW! Thank you.
Forgotten hours of torture
Games like Grandia, Rayman and Half-Life regularly haunt me in my sleep, screaming at me that I should be ashamed of never having finished them. Not Lemmings, though, which has never kept me awake at night. Well, none of the others have either, but I wanted to exaggerate to make the point clearer. I would have liked to have got further, though; at least finish the easy mode. And also figure out how to get past that famous level where the Lemmings crash to the ground as soon as they arrive. That one really drove me crazy. And the sequel? Is it worth checking out?
I don't think I ever knew it existed until... well, until I did five minutes of research to write this article. It's a shame, because unlike Worms, whose successors Worms 2 and Worms Armageddon adopted an art style that I didn't like at all, Lemmings 2 kept the same graphic style as the first one. I only remember seeing images of a 3D version and thinking it was the same game, and I immediately declared the licence unworthy of me. Yeah, I sometimes thought of myself as an alpha gamer. But only when faced with Lemmings idiots, never when faced with real human beings, who would have immediately reminded me of my status as a geek victim. Come on, it's been a long time since I felt smart, I'm going to try the game again and hope not to blow up all these idiots at once.
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