Thursday, December 28, 2006

"Let's Go!"

Some say they just don't make video games like they used to. Agree or disagree, I'm at least happy there are folks out there keeping the classics alive, through things such as this online version of the original Lemmings.

I remember my friends and I getting a demo of Lemmings in advance of the product's release many, many years ago. It was just four levels, one for each of the game's four difficulties. But those were the only four levels we had until the full game hit, so we played the hell out of them, over and over and over again. And when it seemed as though we'd played them out, we invented new ways to attack them, such as trying to complete all four levels without killing any Lemmings (which, for at least a few levels, was not the expected way to complete the level -- but not impossible).

I spent huge amounts of time on Lemmings. And now I can do it again.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

the Super Nintendo version had a vs mode where the two players tried to get as many lemmings as they could into their own exit. since the green or blue-shirted lemmings often crossed paths, it was much easier to sabotage your opponent (and much more fun too!). if you haven't played it I highly recommend you seek out an old SNES it will be well worth it.

and I even played through the sequel Lemmings 2: The Tribes where there was lots more things for them to do like run (to get ahead of everybody), swim, and even weird things like throw javelins and magnet boots on the ceiling. just as much fun as the original (maybe more?!)

the mole
(yippee!)

DrHeimlich said...

I seem to remember that same two-player mode available on the PC as well, but we didn't play much with it. Back in those days, it was a less common thing to have two computers networked together and all.

Yeah, the sequel rocked. Some tribes I got all the way through their levels, like Shadow and Beach. Other tribes were kicking my ass, and I never did finish their sections of that game.

Anonymous said...

Lemmings came up in a related discussion I was having recently. We were trying to figure out which game has (probably) been released the most times. Lemmings was up there along with Tetris and Pacman.

I remember playing Lemmings with my mom on a 386. I'd work the keyboard to choose the right job and she'd use the mouse to target the lemmings. Hours of fun.