Astro Hacker News - The Lamentable Later Life of Lemmings

boredhedgehog |next [-]

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.

bluedino |next |previous [-]

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.

Jare |root |parent [-]

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.

probably_wrong |next |previous [-]

> 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

thedrexster |next |previous [-]

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

jachee |root |parent |next [-]

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)

danwills |root |parent |previous [-]

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!

danwills |root |parent [-]

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)!

herniatedeel |next |previous [-]

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

MrDresden |next |previous [-]

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.

georgemcbay |next |previous [-]

> 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.

jtbayly |root |parent [-]

It’s actually mentioned in the article.

TacticalCoder |previous [-]

oh noooooooo!

romland |root |parent [-]

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!

georgemcbay |root |parent [-]

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.

romland |root |parent [-]

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