Lemmings prototype version?

[Mr. K]

I just found this page on a site called "The Cutting Room Floor":  http://tcrf.net/Proto:Lemmings" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">http://tcrf.net/Proto:Lemmings

Apparently it has 5 levels available and minor differences in the required numbers of Lemmings saved.  It seems to be a demo of sorts, probably sent to magazines before the release.

Also, while it doesn't say it directly, I believe it has that loading screen that is shown in http://www.javalemmings.com/DMA/Lem_4.htm" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">The Lemmings Story.  Mike Dailly says there that it was only used on the editor disks, but it is used here.  The article on TCRF actually has a clean screenshot of it!

http://tcrf.net/images/f/fe/Lemmingsbetatitle.PNG" alt="" class="bbc_img" />

This is cool, but there doesn't seem to be any information on this demo's origins or anything.  I tried to find a disk image of it to no success.  Anyone else have some information?  Perhaps with a copy of it there is some other interesting unused stuff to be found in the data.

[Lemmy556]

Tried this. You can find it from Planet Emulation.

[Mr. K]

Ah, thanks for the tip.  I wouldn't have looked there since it's in French and everything.

I took a quick look at it and perhaps it's not much exciting but still a good milestone in Lemmings stuff to note.  A few things I noticed:

-Indeed the "unused" loading screen is used.  In the disk files it is available as a stand-alone file, but I can only read it in Workbench. not in Windows.  I imagine it's a DPaint formatted file or something and that's why.
-The "out" counter is always 3 digits, in the final it changes based on how many digits the actual number of Lemmings out has.
-The game is one of few words.  It just says "Well done, target reached" when you beat a level (and then automatically proceeds to the next level) and "Not enough I'm afraid" if you don't.  Percentages here are displayed similarly to that out counter, always in 3 digits with extra spaces padded with 0s.
-No sounds when Lemmings drown.  (However, this seems to be intentional-- the message you get at the end of the game promotes "full blown sound effects that are not in this demo")
-More than 100 lemmings!  "Watch Out, There's Traps About" has 120.
-I don't remember if this is true for the final or not, but the exit in "If At First You Don't Succeed" is mispositioned two pixels too low.
-I also don't remember if this applies to the final or not, but the samples used in the music are stand-alone files on the disk.