This is only a guide about the game, and not a guide on how to play the game.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your attention please...

DISCLAIMER

We take no responsibility for:

1. Loss of sleep
2. Loss of hair
3. Loss of sanity
4. The elevator music

Beware of back seat players!

Beware of playing against violent bad losers!
GOOD LUCK!

From the title screen of Lemmings I

...We are now at lemcom one*!

Of all the games in the genre of puzzle solving, and of all the games in the category of 'addictively annoying', the master champion has to be Lemmings. With over one hundred and twenty levels of varying difficulty, it is only right to label this game as one of the best classics of all time.

History of the Game

Lemmings was made originally in 1991 by DMA Design, a company for game design based in Scotland. It was developed for virtually all the game systems available at the time of creation. This is the list of all the systems that Lemmings has now been developed for, including the release date:

Other companies soon saw the potential of Lemmings and worked on developing the game for other consoles. Focus Studios, Probe Software, Visual Sciences, Psygnosis, Interactive Design, Sunsoft, Presage and Ocean all made Lemmings for at least one games console that it was released on.

Since the success of the first Lemmings, there have been a number of sequels. Unfortunately, these were not as popular or any better as the original, and interest soon dropped*. Sales of Lemmings I however, were still high. Here is a list of the sequels:

• Save the Lemmings/Covox Lemmings
• Lemmings from the Original Companion
• Lemmings II - The Tribes
• Christmas/Holiday Lemmings
• The Lemmings Chronicles/All New World of Lemmings
• 3D Lemmings
• Lemmings Paintball
• Adventures of Lomax

Lemmings comes with its own brand of cuteness. The green-haired creatures walking around aimlessly need your careful guidance to see them safely home. Or in some cases, not. As the player's patience begins to ebb away with numerous attempts at the same level, it is only fair that a typical side-effect is to pull your own hair out in exasperation*.

Features of the Game

There are many aspects of Lemmings that put it together as well as make it incredibly irritating.

The Music

All computer games have music to accompany them. Sometimes, the music can be soothing to the ears. Others have a hearty rhythm with drum-and-bass smashing it out in the background. But none can be as unpleasant as the tunes you hear on this game.

Lemmings boasts a wide variety of classic camping songs and ditties remixed by the choicest elevator music composer. With songs like 'Ten Green Bottles' and 'She'll Be Coming 'Round The Mountain' remixed to make them deliberately displeasing, the player is doubly tortured by the cheerful strains of these songs and the hardness of the level.

On saying this, not all of the tunes are bad. Sometimes, the player may grow to like the music.

Although the music does have a kind of quaint Eighties' throwback quality, it can be blocked out by the puzzles needed to be solved.

The other alternative is to switch on the sound effects.

The Sound Effects

When this is selected, it automatically deactivates the music, saving the player from the repetitive squallor of elevator music. The sound effects fill in the musical gap.

The control panel sounds out a musical scale as you choose a job for a lemming, and a little pop is heard when you decide to blow up a lemming. Of course, in the event of conceding defeat, many pops are heard when you nuke* all the lemmings in the screen, along with the famous Oh no! cry.

This nuking can be carried out in all the levels.

The Ratings and their Levels

There are four main ratings, each comprising of thirty levels.

From easiest to hardest:

• Fun
• Tricky
• Taxing
• Mayhem

Depending on the console that Lemmings was developed for, two more ratings of hard difficulty were also made:

• Present
• Sunsoft

On the SNES, the extra rating was Sunsoft which was made up of five extra levels. The Sega MegaDrive had both Present and Sunsoft ratings which each had thirty levels respectively, as Sunsoft produced the game for both these consoles.

Each level has a time limit in which to complete it. If by this time, not all of the lemmings required have been saved, the level has to be redone. The level also has to be redone in the event that not all of the requirements have been met; ie the minimum percentage of lemmings to be saved has not been reached, all the lemmings die, or they are all nuked.

It has been found that some levels are repeated in the harder levels. One such example is the level 'We all fall down', which occurs not only in Fun but also in Tricky. The only difference is that the level has been made harder in Tricky.

The levels themselves have names which may or may not reflect the point of the problem needed to be solved. Some names are quite ironic, such as 'Lemmingentry, dear Watson' or 'If only they could fly'. It hints that there is a simple answer. You just have to find it.

Passwords

As standard for games which have many levels in them, it is only merciful that the game developers put these passwords in so that everyone would not lose sleep/hair/sanity so easily.

These passwords are given when a level is completed, letting the player have access to the next level. This lets him/her start off at the point which they stopped playing, rather than having to redo all the levels up to that point again.

Each password consists of five letters from all the alphabet*. The passwords are completely random in the way which they are programmed, so there is no chance of skipping levels by working out what the next password is.

Normality

There are two possible states that the lemmings could be in. These states are automatically given to the lemmings and are passive.

The Walker

This is the state that the lemming will mainly be in. The walker will walk on anything that is horizontal and fairly flat. If there is an obstruction which it cannot walk over, it will simply turn and walk in the opposite direction. The lemming will not care if the surface that they are walking on suddenly ends with no wall to stop it - they will walk on*. Death is instantaneous at this point.

The Faller

When the lemming is first released, it is a faller until it reaches the ground. Fallers are lemmings which do not have the skill of the floater, and die when dropped from a great height. Fallers only move in one direction, and that, is down.

The Skills

There are eight different skills which can be assigned to the lemmings when they are in either of their two passive states.

The Climber

When a lemming is assigned this job, it is able to climb up straight walls. This is one skill a lemming is able to keep using over and over, so there is no need to keep making it a climber. Unfortunately, the lemming does not climb back down when it reaches something which blocks its path. It just falls. From a large height, this means death is certain. You may want to make it into...

The Floater

This is another skill which a lemming can use over and over again. This skill prevents lemmings from falling to their death at breakneck speed. Instead, the lemming opens up an umbrella and the creature just floats gently to the ground without killing itself. A lemming can be both a floater and a climber*, as well as being other things.

The Bomber

Here, the lemming sacrifices itself to blow a medium-sized hole in its surrounding area. It has a handy five-second fuse but the lemming walks around, so it may not blow up in the place you want. For more accurate bombing, you may want to turn the prospective bomber first into...

The Blocker

This skill makes the lemming block the path ahead. Lemmings who approach the blocker are turned away. Unfortunately, when a lemming becomes a blocker, it is almost impossible to change it into something else. Blockers are also useful for accurate bombing as they do not move.

The Builder

When a lemming becomes a builder, it builds a path out of a given amount of paving slabs at an elevated angle. This skill is probably the most widely used. The lemming, however, will use up its entire quota of slabs and will stop building at some of the most inopportune times*.

The Basher

This skill lets the lemming bash through walls at right angles to the vertical. Again, this is a widely-used skill. This is useful in creating paths to another place, but the basher will not stop bashing until it reaches a gap in the floor or wall*.

The Miner

The miner is similar to the basher in that it makes pathways to other places. It mines downwards at a diagonal angle. The miner, however, only stops when there is no ground left to mine.

The Digger

The lemming will dig straight down into the ground. Again, large heights may be a problem here. The digger will not stop until its job is changed*, or there is nothing left to dig.

Depending on the level and rating, you can be given all of these skills to use, or just a select few. Whatever you are given, they are in the game developers' infinite wisdom, just what you need to complete the level.

The Future Is Coming On...

How Lemmings even managed to top the ratings on the games charts is totally unknown. But the now well-known cries of 'Let's go!' and 'Oh no!' are enough to annoy the people who have lost sleep, hair and sanity trying to solve every single level in the game. With many sequels and spin-offs to this game, Lemmings has gone down in history as the most brain-teasing and infuriating game ever.