Lemmings is 20 years old today | Hacker News Reader

Lemmings is 20 years old today

scottishgames.net

161 pointssambeau32 comments

In contrast to the oft-proclaimed response to these sort of things, this news actually makes me feel young. I mean, Lemmings has been around forever, and when forever turns out to only be twenty years I feel much, much younger.

Also, I totally sucked at Lemmings. It wasn't until Worms arrived that I found my cute little animal with a death wish.

Also also - Lemming suicide is basically a fiction created by Disney's Wild Kingdom in 1958. http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp

Same- Lemmings seems like one of those games that's as old as computers

Maybe this is different for people who remember a world without Lemmings? I remember buying a copy of Lemmings for the Amiga... so that 20 yrs makes me feel super old. :-)

Agreed. I remember when Lemmings was the best game of the year. It was one of few I forked out money for on the Amiga. I wasn't much of a gamer by the time I had moved to Amiga, as I'd found other things to occupy my interest (programming, music, and networks, mostly). Knowing it is 20 years old is a reminder of my mortality, and not a "I'm so young!" moment.

I still find myself playing it for a while whenever anyone posts a link to the online version. And, it's still a compelling gaming experience. Like Tetris, it never really gets old.

The lemming suicide myth wasn't created by Disney, but it was certainly popularized by them. Various stories about the behavior of lemmings date to the 1500's.

I loved Lemmings. Is used to write the level codes on little post-it notes and stuck them all around me. After a few days my room looked like Mr. Nash's garage in 'A Beautiful Mind'.

"...followed by a cease-and-desist letter from Sony."

I thought that was just a random reference to Sony's recent legal trigger happiness. Didn't realize they actually owned Lemmings until reading comments here.

That was one of the most ported games in history. Imagine all the platforms it could appear on now, if Sony didn't own it.

If you're looking to recreate the lemmings experience on modern hardware, don't forget Pingus:

http://pingus.seul.org/

My kids and I have hours of fun with this game. My only complaint is that the penguins can't swim.

Yeah, that always bothered me when I played Frogger too.

One of the most memorable games of my childhood. I don't know what a PS3 version would look like, but I'd love to play one.

I had the privilege of working with Mike Dailly and Russell Kay (and Dave Jones) last year.

Mike and I (and Bill who did the physics for GTA) made a 3D lemmings-like prototype with 100,000 blue & green zombies in a city-like environment. And a cute tank :)

It started (as Lemmings did) with Mike just fooling about trying to see how many sprites he could get animating on screen at once. He managed 1,000,000 of the original lemmings sprites walking around on modern hardware.

Sigh. Happy days.

There actually was an official "Lemmings 3D" in which you could even switch to the first person view of individual lemmings.

Unfortunately apart from the novelty factor the game-play was pretty bad, nowhere near the 2d lemmings.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAeFxDbNTsA

Lemmings Revolution was pretty fun. The 3D was almost superfluous, of course, but it was a neat way to retain the 2D gameplay while looking modernish.

There is a PS3 version, it was a downloadable launch title. I'm sure it's still available, and for 5 or 10 bucks.

Really, really fun; they added some great challenges like a mode where everything is dark except for some candlelit areas.

I've played a PSP version, and it had a really neat fast-forward static effect (and seemed pretty true to the original).

A modern version with more mechanics (time travel?) would be much appreciated.

Someone has taken time to rip some of the music tracks from the game and make them avaiable. http://www.mirsoft.info/gmb/music_info.php?id_ele=NjMz

I have been crushing these Lemmings tunes on YouTube all morning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM7wBdPYric

I just want to start digging like a maniac. Or blocking traffic. Or laying bricks. Or parachuting with an umbrella.

There were lots of good games from around then, which I've recently enjoyed playing on dosbox.

You can see screenshots and videos of lemmings et. al. here: http://www.pixelbeat.org/misc/dosbox/

I miss Lemmings. Is there a version that'll run on today's PCs? Without using Dosbox, that is.

There a browser version: http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/

You should probably mention, that this Javascript-based DHTML-version is from 2004.

I remember being completely amazed seeing that. Javascript was so much harder back then.

It's owned by Sony these days so it's most likely to find it's most likely to find its way onto PSP if at all.

It was released on the PSP (with updated graphics and extra levels) back in 2006.

You can give Pingus a try. http://pingus.seul.org/welcome.html

As a Lemmings fan, I really like Pingus. Very much like the original Lemmings in play and in spirit.

iPad version please!!!

It's owned by Sony so that very unlikely I'm afraid

shows how clever it is to be a content producer and hardware manufacturer at the same time..

It certainly is. It's very nearly the same strategy that took Sun to the dizzying heights it enjoys today.

Maybe http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/ works?

Lemmini (http://lemmini.de/) is a fantastic way to play Lemmings on modern hardware. (The data files you'll need are easily torrentable.)

This came up on another thread a while back, but Psygnosis still officially has the awesomest logo of all time.

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