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Happy Birthday Lemmings
- jl6 3y agoI first played Lemmings on a Mac IIsi, and later on an Amiga 1200. I remember the pixel-perfect timing being brutally difficult with the low-quality Amiga ball mouse, but I played it enough that I can still hum all the tunes.
- rob74 3y agoI remember that the "P" key was your friend... and I never thought the Amiga mouse was bad quality, but maybe those shipped with the Amiga 500 were still better, I used to clean it regularly, and of course I hadn't used optical mice until then :)
- gokhan 3y agovgalemmi tgalemmi Don't know why I still remember those.
- Razengan 3y agoWe need some modern games like Lemmings or the "classic" 2D Worms. HOW did they do that pixel-perfect terrain destruction anyway?
- snerbles 3y ago> We still don't have any modern games like Lemmings or the "classic" 2D Worms.. or do we? Noita comes to mind. Also includes some pretty wild fluid dynamics. > HOW did they do that pixel-perfect terrain destruction anyway?? Usually the terrain is a bitmap, and various effects paint/erase it.
- cwillu 3y agoThe video framebuffer isn't rendered from the game state, it is the game state.
- chongli 3y agoThat may have been the case for the original Lemmings — where the background is black so you can collision test directly against black pixels — but newer games have background textures. If you want to have complex backgrounds and terrain textures with pixel-perfect collisions and terrain modification then you’ll likely want to keep separate buffers for foreground and background. Then your game engine would operate on a bitmask for collision and destruction of terrain, and you’d construct the framebuffer by blitting [1] the foreground and background using the mask to select between them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitter
- vardump 3y agoFor example Amiga and most 16-bit consoles could just have two (or more) playfields (like layers or screen size sprites) superimposed on each other. For the game code those pixels would still be "black", well, transparent, even with background graphics showing through. No blitting required, playfields were drawn by the display hardware at scanout.
- RGamma 3y agoeets (2006) is similar.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>We still don't have any modern games like Lemmings or the "classic" 2D Worms That's like complaining we haven't made a modern Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson or that we haven't remade The Godfather. If the originals are so simple, accessible, and so good, what more could you bring to the table with a new modern version to guarantee a big sales success to offset the risk and cost of starting such and endeavor when gamers can just play the existing originals. Not everything needs a reboot/remake, especially if perfection has already been achieved.
- selcuka 3y ago> If the originals are so good and can be played today on modern systems, what more could you bring to the table with modern versions to guarantee a big success. That's a weird deduction. Everything can be improved upon. Why do we have loads of modern games like Doom, for example? It was good too, and can be played today on modern systems.
- autoexec 3y agoI'm still waiting for FMV games to come back into fashion. They were a neat blend of theater and adventure games (which is another genre that doesn't get enough love)
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoApples to oranges. Doom is a different genre. Some genres, like Worms, just peak much sooner than others, like Doom, and don't benefit from newer graphics or technological improvements. Just like UX design, at some point you peak, and any more changes you try to add for the sake of improvements, just end up making the product worse. Look at current commercial operating systems or at Reddit. They also made a 3D Worms game a while back and it was a massive flop. Often, simpler is better. Sure, everything can always be improved an you might hypothetically be able to build an even better Worms game than the original, but since the bar is already so high, you have very little chance of topping it and all the risks of failure.
- samatman 3y ago
- xtracto 3y agoI remember enjoying a later version of lemmings called lemmings tower or something similar. It was pretty cool.
- kibwen 3y agoWhile I wouldn't quite call Liero "modern", dating from 1998, the modern part is that you can play it multiplayer in your browser instantly: https://www.webliero.com/ https://www.webliero.com/ There's also King Arthur's Gold, which is a free multiplayer game that I'm sure only has like ten players online these days but is an absolute hoot regardless: https://store.steampowered.com/app/219830/King_Arthurs_Gold/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/219830/King_Arthurs_Gold/
- chongli 3y agoKing Arthur's Gold looks familiar! Must be an homage to the hidden gem King Arthur's World [1] for the SNES. I played the heck out of that game. Fantastic music and clearly an interesting take on the Lemmings genre! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur%27s_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur%27s_World
- Eric_WVGG 3y agoThe humor is occasionally (often) crude, but Zombie Night Terror is a fantastic modern Lemmings-style game. You run a zombie invasion, the zombies have attributes not unlike the ones from Left 4 Dead, but the gameplay is pure Lemmings. https://www.zombienightterror.com https://www.zombienightterror.com (Incidentally the best game I've ever played on an iPad.)
- prmoustache 3y ago> We need some modern games like Lemmings or the "classic" 2D Worms. Yes we have. https://hedgewars.org/ https://hedgewars.org/
- joveian 3y agoNot the pixel art style that you seem to mean but there is a recent lemmings 3D style game called Tin Harts. I haven't played it yet but it looks interesting. https://www.gog.com/en/game/tin_hearts https://www.gog.com/en/game/tin_hearts Also, it is voxels rather than hand drawn pixel art but I thought Urbek did a great job at feeling like that era of game. It is as much a puzzle game as a builder (there are a number of levels of upgrade that require other buildings within a certain distance). https://www.gog.com/en/game/urbek_city_builder https://www.gog.com/en/game/urbek_city_builder
- johndhi 3y agoSo many memories
- neglesaks 3y ago[dead]
- qingcharles 3y agoI still remember the day I walked into my local games store and bought it off the shelf. It was flying off the shelves. I think there was a cover disc demo the previous month which had started the hype machine.
- orionblastar 3y agoI played Lemmings on my Amiga 1000. Later when I bought a 386DX PC Clone I bought Lemmings for DOS and VGA. Open Source version is Pingus: https://pingus.seul.org/ https://pingus.seul.org/
- sirspacey 3y agoMe too man!! What an amazing time that was.
- archsurface 3y agoOh I enjoyed Lemmings. Nice flashback.
- cwillu 3y agohttps://archive.org/details/lemmings_2_the_tribes_1992 https://archive.org/details/lemmings_2_the_tribes_1992
- fourseventy 3y agolove that game
- jedberg 3y agoAnnnnnnd now I'm playing Lemmings.
- BuildTheRobots 3y agoDHTML Lemmings is still playable in a modern browser: https://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/ https://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/ It's dated 2004, but I'm convinced I remember playing it earlier.
- shaunxcode 3y agoI definitely played it around 2001 when it was posted to slashdot!
- andirk 3y agoCan I please get some codes to do further levels?
- gnicholas 3y agoThe furthest I have handy is 12: KOMHCMOMCX
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tsukurimashou 3y agoa shame it has no sound
- micheljansen 3y agoIt used to (see control.js) but it doesn't seem to be working anymore.
- micheljansen 3y agoThe first version is from 2003: https://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_message/18377456#18377456 https://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_message/18377456#1... It got taken down shortly after that by BREIN, the Dutch copyright watchdog, but it lives on as Pumpkins. Amazing that JS from the Internet Explorer era still works well 20 years later.
- torbengee 3y agoLOL I just played through Lemmings in one of those DosBox emulators a few days ago ... so much fun!! The music alone brought back some good memories.
- ekianjo 3y agothe amiga version is the best though
- th0ma5 3y agoFirst time I ever stayed up all night playing a game it was Lemmings. Second time was Angry Birds lol. I don't game much.
- Symbiote 3y agoThe Acorn Archimedes (origin of the ARM CPU) version said "Goodnight all! Hope you've not been up all night!" when you quit.
- thom 3y agoWhenever I pass this building in Sheffield, I immediately think “you need bashers this time”. https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/acse/department/facilities/diamond https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/acse/department/facilities/diamo...
- Symbiote 3y agoLemmings tourists might also appreciate the statue in Dundee: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/lemmings-statue https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/lemmings-statue (OK, also linked in the article.)
- adzm 3y agoLet's go!
- antihipocrat 3y agoThere was one level that stumped me for a long time, it was the level that introduced the one dig direction game mechanic. I was young and there was no internet to look up a solution. One night I dreamed the solution, how obvious it was! Even now I still remember this experience when confronted with an intractable problem.
- bombcar 3y agoI worked out the rescuing your blocker trick on my own, but had to learn the build to turn around trick from a strategy guide.
- jamiek88 3y agoHow do you rescue the blocker?!
- Symbiote 3y agoI think the acceptable ways to find that out is watching a parent or older sibling play the game, or figuring it out yourself ;-)
- mnw21cam 3y agoYou remove the ground it is standing on, and it stops being a blocker.
- woliveirajr 3y agoDamn it. Took that long to learn.
- bombcar 3y agoExactly. If you have some steps to spare, make a lemming make steps, then make him a blocker. A badger can remove what he’s standing on later.
- netcoyote 3y agoLemmings is such a fun game! I played many hours of it trying to perfectly solve its many puzzles. Lemmings inspired Ron Millar, a designer at Silicon & Synapse (later Blizzard Entertainment), to invent The Lost Vikings, our first original game: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Vikings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Vikings The original design for Vikings was very similar to Lemmings but saw massive changes during the course of development, going from many Vikings to five to eventually just three. We owe a debt of gratitude to the Lemmings devs for inspiring our efforts.
- muzani 3y agoI loved the Lost Vikings as a kid! It's actually charmed me about as much as Lemmings, though if I had to pick, I still prefer Lemmings' dark humor.
- rob74 3y agoYeah, the ambivalence between "oh, I want to save every one of these cute little critters" and "f** this, I'm sick of it, I'll just click 'nuke' instead of pressing the escape key to restart" was really something special...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cptskippy 3y agoThe Lost Vikings was one of my favorite games growing up. There have been so many attempts to copy the formula (e.g. Trine) but none have been so memorable or endearing. The character and level designs are wonderful.
- jacobolus 3y agoDoes anyone know if there's a good way to play Three Vikings on a modern laptop or iPad?
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- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- advael 3y agoI loved lemmings as a kid, and bits of the soundtrack get stuck in my head to this day (I know a lot of it is just chippy arrangements of otherwise famous public domain music, but the arrangements were great). Even at the time it was a really original concept in a way that people seldom manage, like something that could have (but as far as I can tell didn't) become its own "genre" of game
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wackget 3y agoI could have sworn I saw a documentary where they talked about having legal issues with some of the music, because some of it (e.g. "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountains") was not public domain. There's a little bit written about it on Wikipedia but I wish I could find the documentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_(video_game)#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_(video_game)#Developm...
- advael 3y agoO. My mistake, thanks for letting me know Also, if you're not being facetious and actually didn't notice, they do have a youtube embed of the full documentary made in 2022 at the bottom of the linked article. I haven't taken the time to watch it, but maybe that's the one you're thinking of
- Symbiote 3y agoMany of those traditional or folk songs I first heard in Lemmings. "Dad, are they playing Lemmings music?" "It's called Pachebel's Canon, it's from the 17th century!" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QwXthGJfHLc&t=118s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QwXthGJfHLc&t=118s (And I choose that one as the forlorn, mournful sound seems most appropriate as all the lemmings march to their death.) Documentary: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RbAVNKdk9gA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RbAVNKdk9gA
- rob74 3y ago
- ijhuygft776 3y agoa classic.
- garquis 3y agoFirst video game I remember playing. Dad worked at a warehouse for the local school district and when I’d go to work with him, he’d set me up on their IBM PC and let me play lemmings the entire day. Truly loved that game
- justinludwig 3y agoI loved Lemmings (the game) as a kid! But as an adult, I found out everything I thought I knew about lemmings (the animal) was a lie: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/white-wilderness-lemming-suicide/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/white-wilderness-lemming-s...
- willvarfar 3y agoI remember Lemmings! I remember getting into programming by trying to make games because of games like Lemmings! So where is the outlet? (I just did a search for Ludum Dare, and it seems ... dead?)
- dmurray 3y agoPretty sure Ludum Dare is still around; a friend competed in a recent one. The website looks a bit behind, with a YouTube video and calls for signups for a 2022 event. But the competition still seems to be running and got "an avalanche of submissions" for the most recent event in September 2023 [0]. Maybe you can find more about it on Reddit [1], and there's also mention of a Discord server. [0] https://flashlight13.medium.com/ludum-dare-54-hidden-gems-by-anton-potapov-c971a5746ee7 https://flashlight13.medium.com/ludum-dare-54-hidden-gems-by... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ludumdare/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ludumdare/
- willvarfar 3y agoAnd the answer is: the organiser went and built a new website at https://ldjam.com https://ldjam.com and does a _really_ bad job of redirecting users to the new one. So all you see on the old main website is stale content and inactivity. :unimpressed_shrug:
- unwind 3y agoDead? The schedule page [1] has recent and upcoming instances scheduled, at least: Ludum Dare 54 — September 29th - October 2nd, 2023 Ludum Dare 55 — April 12th - 14th, 2024 Ludum Dare 56 — October 4th - 7th, 2024 I never tried it, I don't have a quickly accessible game programming framework. Nor the time, heh. [1]: https://ludumdare.com/#schedule https://ludumdare.com/#schedule
- markx2 3y agoIf the Lemmings games were remastered and slated for release I'd pay full price in a heartbeat. I'm sure a Kickstarter for this purpose would be very well received.
- rob74 3y agoUnfortunately Sony has been sitting on the IP for Lemmings for quite some time now and hasn't done a lot with it. There was a mobile game a few years ago however (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sadpuppy.lemmings https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sadpuppy.l...), but apparently the free version is pretty ad-infested (haven't tried it yet). There was also "Lemmings Revolution" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_Revolution) which is over 20 years old by now, but tried to translate the original concept into something that would look good in 3D. I thought it was ok, but didn't enjoy it quite as much as the originals (which of course could have something to do with the fact that I was younger when I played the original games).
- Kirth 3y agoI played revolution as a kid, it was fun! I wonder if it still runs on modern hardware
- waitforit 3y agoThere is a game in development that combines the lemmings esthetic with base building. The Settlings: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1771110/The_Settlings/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1771110/The_Settlings/
- InitialLastName 3y agoAnother game in the opposite spirit (different graphics, similar gameplay): https://humanity.game/ https://humanity.game/
- tempodox 3y agoLemmings was a game that I thoroughly enjoyed at the time. Happy birthday!
- louthy 3y agoIt always blew my mind how well animated the 12 pixel high lemmings were. The dynamics were incredible.
- caseyf 3y agoyes!!
- louthy 3y agoSorry, did I say 12 pixels? I meant 10! [1] Zooming out on that image it all comes flooding back - they have such swagger! The animator deserves an award of some sort. [1] https://i.imgur.com/WAltx1l.gif https://i.imgur.com/WAltx1l.gif
- gpderetta 3y agoI can't be bothered to check if the article mentions this, but apparently the game was born as a challenge for the artist to draw the smallest animated character that was still recognizable!
- ensocode 3y agoMy first contact to computer games. Now thinking of introducing computers with this to my 5 yo
- vintermann 3y agoTim Wright's Lemmings music is low-key brilliant. It has a deliberately rough and dorky instrumentation with very "synthetic" trumpets and accordion (You can make much "better" instrumented music on the Amiga, and we know Tim could do that too!). It is somehow as cute and vexing as the little critters themselves. And yet there's that subtle element of old English-Scottish folk that makes it magical.
- DeathArrow 3y agoI was a poor child when Lemmings came out, so I didn't have a PC.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoYou can play it today.
- mdekkers 3y agoAlso see https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=5306.0 https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=5306.0 for info on where to find and play Lemmings!
- boredhedgehog 3y agoI wonder why the open source ports never caught on like they did for other games. In any thread about Transport Tycoon, it's five minutes until people start talking about OpenTTD, yet NeoLemmix and Lix are barely known, despite all the innovation and custom level design taking place there.
- freetime2 3y agoMy dad got my family our first PC for Christmas in 1990. Back then I didn’t know anything about PC gaming, and when my dad took me and my brother out to pick out games, our decisions were driven mostly by the box art. The first game I ever bought was Sim City, which I thought had some really intriguing box art. And my brother bought King’s Quest V. Such a great introduction to PC gaming for a couple young kids. And I remember when Lemmings came out, it had really distinctive box art. I had no idea what it was about, but I remember it caught my eye and I wanted it from the first time I saw the box. It turned out to be completely different than I was expecting, but also incredibly fun and satisfying. Never judge a book by its cover, but choosing PC games by their box art worked surprisingly well!
- Symbiote 3y agoPart of the linked documentary inverviews the box/poster/etc artist, who had never worked on a computer game before.
- codeulike 3y agoIn 1991 I was writing games and in those days you had to think a lot about how many moving objects there were on the screen and how many you could fit within the frame rate etc. So that gave games that 'arcade' feel where the player controls one spaceship (say) and it can have 8 bullets on the screen at one time and enemies attack in waves of six etc. I suppose at that point processors were moving beyond those limitations but games were still conceived in those sorts of terms. When I first saw Lemmings I was just amazed as to how it ignored all of that. The player controls up to 100 characters. The gameplay was freeform, you could dig through whatever, build a ladder wherever. It was a real paradigm shift. You can set ten lemmings to explode. When they do, the framerate will drop to a very slow lag. But that doesn't matter, because its fun.
- cdelsolar 3y agoI was totally addicted to the SNES version. I’ve been wanting to play this game again forever. What is the best way to? (Computer version is fine too, never played it)
- krallja 3y agoOSS remakes: NeoLemmix, Lix In-browser: DHTML Lemmings Second best way: Amiga emulator Best way: a SNES, a Lemmings cartridge, and a CRT TV!
- GoofballJones 3y agoI played this on the Amiga when the game first came out. Loved it.
- myfavoritedog 3y ago[dead]
- pimlottc 3y agoI remember seeing this game for the first time in a computer shop - back when they still had a demo machine for you try to out new games. I came in totally blind, never heard of the company or the game before. It was like no other game I had ever seen. 15 minutes later, I took a copy home. I was hooked. Truly one of the greatest puzzle games of all time.
- yakito 3y agoThe UK has some of the most interesting video game studios in the world. I didn't know that "Lemmings" had been created by Rockstar! Rare is also from the UK.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoTomb Raider is another British classic.
- yakito 3y agoYes! Together with GoldenEye 007 (obviously) and Donkey Kong Country.
- btbuildem 3y agoThe video linked in the article jogs some old memories, wow. The soundtrack to Shadow of the Beast was something else... Lemmings was such an amazing game. I didn't speak English at the time, and I never understood why the pause button had little critter feet on it. Only years later it came: "paws"
- notfed 3y agoWhy has a modern-graphics remake of Lemmings not happened? Surely it'd be a hit?
- joelanman 3y agoNot the same, but some similar modern games: - Pikmin - Zombie Night Terror - Humanity