Game Retrospective: Lemmings
On the 14th of February 1991, Lemmings was first released for the Amiga computer platform across Europe. In the same year, versions of the game would appear on numerous additional platforms, including the ZX Spectrum, Atari ST, MS-DOS and Acorn Archimedes, with countless further ports releasing in the years that followed.
Lemmings was developed by Direct Memory Access (DMA) Design; a small Dundee-based studio that would go on to create the Grand Theft Auto series and later become Rockstar North. The game was created by DMA Design founder David Jones; as well as Mike Dailly and Russell Kay; two programmers whom Jones had known since their days attending a computing club held at Kingsway Technical College, Dundee.
Lemmings is a puzzle/platforming game that requires the player to guide a group of anthropomorphic, green-haired, lemmings through a variety of perilous obstacles towards a designated exit. If the required percentage of the lemmings survive and reach the end of the stage, players can progress to the next level. To help navigate these hazards, eight abilities and skills can be assigned by the player to select lemmings. These include giving lemmings the ability to tunnel through rock, block pathways, parachute down from great heights or even simply blow themselves up. The original release of the game also included several 2-player stages, where players could compete in guiding the greatest number of lemmings back to their own base.
The origins of Lemmings can be traced back to the earlier DMA Design game, Walker. After releasing the side-scrolling shooters Menace (1988) and Blood Money (1989), the team soon began work on their next release. After being impressed by a particular enemy in Blood Money, a walking bipedal robot, Jones suggested the team build a game around that. With this new game adopting the title of ‘Walker’, freelance artist, Scott Johnson, was soon brought on board to begin creating assets for the project.
After completing artwork for the lead Walker character, Johnson began creating sprites of little men as potential enemies. After viewing Johnsons’s creations, programmer Mike Dailly believed that the men could be made even smaller and, over the course of a lunch break using a borrowed Amiga, created an animation featuring these little people. His creation featured the miniature characters, now half the size, marching across the screen and being killed off in a variety of wacky ways; some were being shot at by a laser gun, several were being eaten by an enormous mouth, and others were being crushed by a 10-ton weight. Upon seeing Dailly’s animation, programmer Russell Kay promptly declared, “There’s a game in that!”
While working on DMA’s previous game, Blood Money, Kay had originally planned to include a special type of weapon that would have launched missiles able to travel across the ground and had subsequently established a method that allowed on-screen objects track terrain. Believing that this tech would combine perfectly with Dailly’s animation, he crafted a proof-of-concept demo which the team sent to publisher Psygnosis in 1989, and the game soon became the team's sole focus. According to Mike Dailly, Russell Kay would be the person responsible for the game’s title; referring to the little men as ‘Lemmings’ early in development.
Brian Johnson (brother of Scott) was initially brought on board to create the game’s music which, at DMA Design’s request, included several interpretations of famous themes from TV shows such as Batman, Mission Impossible and The A-Team. However, fearing potential copyright issues, DMA Design and Psygnosis later tasked composer Tim Wright with replacing many of the troublesome tracks. The composer chose to include cover versions of classical pieces, folk tunes and even Christmas carols. With the game’s release looming, Wright was given very little time. In a 2015 interview with Retro Gamer, Wright shared, “It took around a week or so, as there was a pressing deadline.”
Upon release, Lemmings received praise for its addictive gameplay and blend of strategy and action, amassing countless high scores across several gaming magazines. On its first day alone, over 55,000 copies of the game were sold. The game would be ported to over 30 platforms in the years that followed, including the Mega Drive, Game Gear, NES, 3DO and Atari Lynx, eventually selling an estimated 15 million copies.
The game’s success would also lead to numerous sequels and spin-offs including Oh No! More Lemmings and Lemmings 2: The Tribes. The two most recent games in the franchise, now owned by Sony (since their purchase of Psygnosis), would be 2014’s Lemmings: Touch for the PlayStation Vita and 2017’s Lemmings: Puzzle Adventure released for mobile devices.
🕹Are you a fan of the Lemmings series? Which Lemmings games have you played? Would you welcome a new instalment or has the series now had its day? 🕹
