I've lost that Lemming feeling...

[Nezz]

Hello, all.

Disappointed with so many modern video games, I thought I would take a trip down the memory lane and spend some quality time with cute green-haired rodents. I found the Files Archive and through it this forum, and I expected that to be enough to bring the Lemmings experience back to this computer.

Unfortunately, it was not to be.

I started my attempt to play through all the levels with an official-looking Lemmings for Windows client (v 0.9.0.4). It seemed to possess the best features, after all: easy level selection, replays, arrow keys to select the right Lemmings... And it worked quite nicely, but only until I reached a level (Tricky 25) which doesn't seem solvable with this quirky port of the skills. It requires you to build to build up to the wall and bash it, which just doesn't work. Either you turn the Builder before he takes the last step, then he bashes away his own bridge and falls. Or you wait for the last step, then he hits his nose and turns around, much earlier than he would in the real game. Doesn't anyone TEST these things?

Sigh. So I go to the forums again and learn that the Amiga version is actually considered superior: More Lemmings (I never knew there were supposed to be 100), better music, nicer levels. And indeed, for a few levels, I liked it a lot. But then the music goes wonky. Ah, so the ADF rip is broken. Downloaded IPF. But WinFellow doesn't support IPF. So I need WinUAE and a crazy plugin. Except that doesn't work either, the emulator resets after the DMA logo.

On to Dosbox! Ok... but the timing is off, my cursor lags and this screen doesn't support the strange resolution in full screen.

And on goes the journey. Lemmix! Cool concept! But I'm on Win98, and there's no mouse cursor.

Cheapo! Finally something that runs smoothly... but I can't find a port of the original levels.

I tell you, I'm just about ready to jump off a cliff now.

Well, I've bored you long enough with my story of woe. The forum looks so silent these days that I thought I might just as well tell it. It's cool that there's still a community around after all these years to care for the little Lemmings, but in my particular case, the preservation attempts weren't a complete success.  :sad:

I guess I'll go back to the Amiga emulator. Broken music isn't THAT bad, although I've always liked the funny music best...  :sad:

[EricLang]

Switch to win2000 for Lemmix. I am (again) too busy with other things to fix the cursor problem. Sorry

[DragonsLover]

Strange, because I'm under Win98SE either and everything goes fine.

Lemmings95 sucks as there are so much wrong things in the concept of the game (like, Bombers turn other Lemmings when they aren't blockers, Climbers can go through the top of the level and, like you said, Builders turn around too early when they meet a wall).

Amiga Lemmings is the best of them all. But like you said, music goes wrong. Some instruments don't play very well (probably because the image files are corrupted or something).

As for Dosbox, it depends which version of Lemmings you're using. There's the CD version which lags (excepted if you insert a CD with audio soundtracks) and that doesn't have a good safe-fall distance and there's the floppy version (which has a music problem but the safe-fall distance is ok). ccexplore and I did a corrected version of Lemmings that you can find -> HERE <- It has the same levels as the Amiga one with few minor differences in them. I recommend you playing the game using Dosbos 0.70 or better under the "High Performance PCs mode" which makes the skill bar nicer and adds few seconds when time limit reaches 0. Anyway, the "PC Compatibles" mode works either. It is not supposed to lag, try to change some modifications in "dosbox.conf" file like the size of the screen when in fullscreen, the number of cycles... and everything should be fine.

Yeah, under Lemmix, the mouse cursor bug does the same thing for me. But there's a trick: press the "Windows" key or any others combos twice (like Alt+Tab or Alt+Enter) that appears the mouse cursor. You can then use the "Windows" cursor to play. You'll have to repeat this for each level.

Cheapo is NOT an official game of Lemmings. It is only used for creating our own landscapes, objects and lemmings and play them. Unfortunately, it has some minor bugs like Lemmings95, but it's still a nice game though.

There's a version you forgot: the Atari ST one. You can get the Rom file of Lemmings -> HERE <- and then you just have to use it with any Atari ST emulators. I recommend you Steem. Lemmings for Atari ST doesn't have marvellous musics and sound effects, I know, but the levels are totally similar of the Amiga version. Don't forget the TOS Roms too. Something nice with the Atari ST version using Steem is that you can speed up the game if you set it in the keyboard shortcuts, which makes that you don't have to wait for the Lemmings to go to the exit.

Hope that helps! Questions? Just ask!

[Nezz]

Thank you, DragonsLover, that was helpful! I managed to fix the Dosbox options, and now everything looks and sounds as I remember it.

[Mr. K]

The building issue in WinLemm only happens when building towards the right, and doesn't happen if you touch the wall exactly.
But still, it's pretty annoying in any level not explicitly designed for WinLemm.