But You Have So Much To Live For! Lemmings Uncovered

Posted by: Paul Smith

For an innocuous and perfectly likeable little mammal, lemmings seem to have attracted something of a bizarre press. For instance, it was once widely believed that they formed clouds and were rained down during storms. It was then argued that although they did regenerate spontaneously, they were blown in by Scandinavian winds, and were killed by grass. This was in turn debunked, and replaced by the popular myth that lemmings are gloomy little animals, who end up hurling themselves off cliffs in fits of despair. It's all nonsense, and your average lemming is a perfectly happy little chap, eating leaves and various grasses, pausing only to sleep and breed. Sounds quite nice, really.

Fortunately, there is no such ambiguity surrounding Lemmings, released in 1991 by Psygnosis. It was universally loved, and even hailed as a latter day Tetris in some quarters. It also contains perhaps the most eclectic soundtrack of any video game, as a result of Psygnosis' canny avoidance of copyrighted music. Hence, players can find themselves playing solemnly to Chopin's Funeral March, or enthusiastically to camp fire classic She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain. On later versions, it was possible to be stirred by Scotland the Brave, or treat yourself to a right old knees up to the strains of My Old Man (Said Follow The Van) . So where did this rodent themed musical extravangza come from? And in God's name, why?

Like a surprisingly large number of the best things ever, Lemmings came about entirely by accident. Mike Dailly, working for DMA Design (who developed it) was charged with making an animated character in an 8 x 8 pixel box for a completely different game. He did this with ease, and following minor adjustments by his colleagues Gary Timmons and Scott Johnson, Lemmings started to take shape. A forth colleague, Russell Kay, is credited with the eureka moment when, observing the efforts of Dailly, Timmons and Johnson, he pointed at the screen at shouted 'There's a game in that!'

The theme of Lemmings is, predictably enough, to stop the furry little blighters topping themselves. Because they wander around the mazes which form the basis of the game like a bunch of idiots - albeit nattily attired idiots, in nice blue shirts - there are a number of ways they can do this. Falling off things, drowning, being incinerated in rivers of lava, getting caught in traps, being assigned the thankless Bomber duty by the player - the list goes on. It is the player's job to assign individual lemmings to key tasks in key parts of the map so as to prevent, or at least minimise, the carnage. Many of these levels were created by Dailly and Co to annoy Dave Jones, head of Psygnosis, who would constantly interfere with the developement team as they worked ingeniously away. Dailly's levels usually had a clue as to subsequent gameplay, such as 'Hero Time', in which a single lemming had to be assigned to perform a certain vital task in order to save the rest. Timmon's levels were usually very minimal, and Johnson's were action-packed and dense. Additionally, Dailly contributed several crossover levels, which were based upon other Psygnosis titles, adding variety and again avoiding mucking about with copyright law. The music was programmed by Brian Johnson, younger brother of Scott, and the voice of the lemmings was provided by none other than the venerable Mrs Johnson herself.

As mentioned, the player is responsible for assigning tasks to the floundering halfwits as they blunder about the place. Climbers will climb vertical surfaces. Floaters survive falling into water. Bashers, Miners and Diggers are all able to hack a path through obstacles in various directions. Builders create vertical staircases, and Blockers make any lemming that walks into them go back the way they have come. Once assigned, Blockers cannot change duties, although the player can make them explode by converting them to Bombers. On advanced levels, the game takes on an absorbing aquarium-like appearance, and it is possible to take a few seconds to sit back and watch your little cretins working tirelessly away at their tasks as they attempt to save each other from peril. While it is possible to pause the game (it does get fiendishly complex) tasks can only be assigned in real time.

Shortly after its release, Commodore and Amiga Reveiw published an appraisal of Lemmings in which it stated that 'Above all, the concept is simple and the game is fun'. Little need be added to this. The army of golems that appear in Terry Pratchett's novel Interesting Times is heavily influenced by Lemmings, and Pratchett succumbed to the fearsomely addictive nature of the games so completely that he eventually deleted it from his hard drive and re-configured big chunks of his computer so that he would never be able to reinstall it. This is the game that kicked off the real time strategy genre. And we all know what happens when you get involved in that sort of thing. You have been warned.

  About the author

Paul Smith

When not writing stuff for us, Paul has his own blog here. It deals mainly with his war of attrition with the general public, a conflict in which neither side seems to want to back down.

You'd either have to be mad, or just have something better to do, to miss it.

He has Twitter, too, if you fancy it.