The Lamentable Later Life of Lemmings | Hacker News Reader

The Lamentable Later Life of Lemmings

filfre.net

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> For a while there in the early 1990s, there seemed to be good reason to believe that Lemmings was on its way to becoming one of gaming’s perennial franchises. Developed by DMA Design of Dundee, Scotland, the original Lemmings game took the world by storm upon its release in 1991

DMA Design later created the GTA series and was rebranded Rockstar North when they were acquired by Take-Two. So they did end up creating a giant franchise (though "perennial" could certainly be debated given the gap between GTA 5 and GTA 6).

In any case the principles involved have probably been too busy sleeping on mountains of GTA 1-6 money to lament the untimely death of Lemmings too much.

That said, as a gamer I personally prefer Lemmings.

It’s actually mentioned in the article.

Now I’m genuinely wondering if the in game deaths per minute are higher in a GTA game or a lemmings game…

So many parallels with Angry Birds.

Appeals to all groups, released on every platform. Then come the sequels, special editions (like Christmas Lemmings), and then it just kind of faded away.

Lemmings just didn't get a movie and merchandising.

Lemmings was one of the 3-5 inspirations for the Commandos games: - giving different tasks to characters over the level to finish it. Lost Vikings won over Cannonfodder and the Commandos would be very defined characters not a mass of generic soldiers. - levels structured as "bubbles" of logical challenge; after you solve one you typically move on to the next one, eventually reaching the level finish.

The Commandos series also parallels a bit of the history, fizzling out very quickly after Commandos 2, when it might have seemed that the sky was the limit for the series.

There was a stage show[0] (just kidding).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_(National_Lampoon)

> The Children’s Television Workshop, the maker of Sesame Street, entered into talks with Psygnosis about a Lemmings television show. (…) Television shows, whether aimed at adults or children, are built around memorable characters. (…) So, an edict went down from Psygnosis to DMA to find a way to give the lemmings more individualized personalities.

I wonder if anyone brought up Fraggle Rock [1] during these discussions. The Doozers, a race of tiny creatures whose whole purpose in life is to build structures, feels like a perfect fit for the lemmings.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraggle_Rock

You just solved a decade/s old personal mystery!

I randomly saw an episode of some show with these doozers maybe 20 years ago, and I have occsionally remembered them and wandered who they were ever since!

Disagree about 3D Lemmings. Yes, the camera controls sucked, but the extra dimension opens up tons of interesting puzzles and interactions, and it's also aesthetically pleasing to watch them move around and change 3D objects.

There's an open-source engine for it called Loap that comes with a custom level pack, and I think the block-based design holds up better than the fiddly Revolutions.

I came here to say the same, and wonder if a better engine and controls wshould be made. I had no idea to look for one till your comment, thanks!

I didn't even consciously register the release of the many sequels back then. Always assumed it stopped after Lemmings 2.

Lemmings Revolution reminds me a little bit of good old Nebulus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebulus_(video_game)

Man, the soundtrack of the original Lemmings is indelibly etched into my brain -- cheery MIDI tracks of everything from classical music to folk tunes.

Same here! However a friend had an Amiga and the music there was sample-based like a demoscene 'tracker' (but in a proprietary format), so it also had that lovely sample-based aspect ;) I still listen to extracted/covered versions of some of those to this day!

I just learned that one can get the mods here (lemmings 2 actually even used a real tracker called OctaMED!):

https://www.camanis.net/lemmings/music.php

Such a classic sound! Reminds me of the similarly brilliant Star Control II soundtrack (which was also tracker music)!

The musical number I recall best was a medley mash-up of the Bridal Chorus and the Funeral March.

Apparently it’s called “Twang” or “Tenlem” depending on the port. I had the DOS version: https://youtu.be/Z2zN6ljRNnU?t=3523 (timestamped)

"Ten Green Bottles" is the base of that song.

I feel that DHTML Lemmings deserves a mention - an implementation of Lemmings in Javascript in 2003 or 2004. At the time I saw it, my understanding of websites was basic HTML - I had no idea web technologies could be so powerful.

Here it is online, not sure if this is the original site. https://pccc.com/downloads/junk/cool/lemmings/index.html

Fun times...

This is before the DOM Canvas 2D API existed, so effects like digging are implemented by overlaying multiple 1px-high black GIF <img> tags over the background.

Quite the line: "a case of mordant laddish humor ramming slightly askew."

I worked on the 2006 version I thought it was pretty faithful to the original. I also ported it to the PS3, I left after the port I think they changed the game design at the request of Sony (it was a PS3 store launch title)

> The next four Lemmings games would each deal with the fate of three of the twelve tribes after they left the Ark the player had helped them reach last time around. The whole series would be called All New World of Lemmings.

> Not long into development, a feeling took hold in Dundee that they were all just done with Lemmings, ready to come out from under the shadow of the casual monster they had accidentally created and return to making the games they wanted to make. As it happened, this was to be the last game of a six-game contract they had signed with Psygnosis back in the 1980s. Just get ‘er done became the watchword, so that they could take their Lemmings loot and do something more exciting with it.

Sounds like the publisher was the sane one here for a change, while the studio was seriously trying to bite off more than it could chew.

What made them think it was a good idea to commit to four Lemmings games in advance, lock themselves into a rigid storytelling structure, extend the story into a shared universe and coordinate with a TV show - if they all were actually fed up with the franchise at that point?

Thank Psygnosis for rejecting this and enabling the timeline in which we got GTA instead.

Hm? It doesn't sound like Psygnosis rejected it at all. The article points out they half-assed the last title because they still needed to meet that contractual obligation.

I read the image caption like that:

> If matters had transpired differently, All New World of Lemmings would have been the banner title of a new sub-series, with different subtitles for each of its entries. As it was, Psygnosis just dumped the would-be first entry of the sub-series out there on its own, sans subtitle, and abandoned the other nine tribes to their fate.

This reads to me as if Psygnosis only accepted the first of the proposed four games and made it into a standalone title - which then turned out bad anyway.

(Not sure how DMA's four games match with Pygnosis' contract for one more game. Maybe that was an attempt by DMA to extend the contract?)

I had no idea there had been more than one Lemmings game. Remember playing the first one a ton back in the early 90's.

I was waiting for mention of a cliff

oh noooooooo!

In my mind, and I have not played it since the Amiga days, it's a very curt "oh no". Amazing, I can still hear it!

I can still hear it as well.

I can also still hear "First there was Menace... Now, Psygnosis presents... a DMA Design game... Blood Money. (there's a whole lot more coming...)".

DMA had very good sound design for the time.

Yeah, absolutely! Blood Money. I am almost embarrassed that I remember so many of the samples!

indeed, the raw samples are burned into my brain.

That "Oh no!" is stuck in my head like few other game sounds. It's kind of amazing how much personality DMA squeezed out of eight pixels and a two-word sample. The later games kept piling on detail and lost exactly that

"Oh no" is so memorable, but it's also goes hand in hand in my memory with the "Oh ho" from the Worms games.

Both games have a lot in common now I think about it, tiny characters and interactive environments.

It occurs to me Lemmings is the sort of game that could work extremely well as a tablet adaptation, and perhaps on phones too, although the screen may be a bit too small.

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