My life with the Lemmings.

[Mr Kiwi]

I am turning 24 next Sunday; and it suddenly occurred to me... I have been playing Lemmings for almost 17 years of it

I did not have many games as a kid, but the ones I did have always stuck with me (and were played to death).
They were; Jetpack Demo (never got the full copy), Transport Tycoon Deluxe (My Brothers) and Gorilla's an old dos game.
Oh I forgot; Hexxagon & Fairy Godmother (Both purchased from the neighborhood dry cleaners (back then everyone sold games)...
They had shareware stores inside the local mall... If that tells you anything. Yes, They sold "Shareware"!

Then there was Lemmings, I cannot tell you how much this game has stayed with me.

I remember receiving Lemmings back in Feb 1991 as a belated birthday present.
Playing it day in and day out simply for the enjoyment of the game; not because I wanted to see the next level.
I also remember "the" travesty...  One day my disc (unbeknownst to me) fell behind the desk and melted on the heater.

I am not going to bore you with the filler years (8-23).

I just wanted to say;

I have allocated seventeen years of my life to these green haired rodents.
Lemmings has been good to me and (I believe) it will continue to be for the next seventeen...

Considering all that, I have to look back and ask my self "was it worth it?"...
I think so.

:mikeconfused:

[Chmera]

Agreed. =P

[Anatol]

Since I'm only 20, and Lemmings is 17 years old, a greater percentage of my life has been taken up playing Lemmings. That either means I'm way cooler than you or that I've wasted more of my life than you. :tongue:

[DragonsLover]

Yeah, I started playing Lemmings when I was 5 or 6 years old. I spent so much times playing Lemmings, especially in 2-Players mode with my old friend. That was a good time!

[Mr Kiwi]

I will not dispute you this time as it will only make me write a long paragraph on "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

So in all fairness...
You win this round Anatol....

[Chmera]

I fail at having no life.
I've only been a fan since... *thinks*... A couple of years. I bought a cheap copy(̣5 at Game!) of Lemmings For Windows.

...Can anyone give me an exact turned-up date? As probably any of the oldbies know I was called AstralLemming back then. I sucked at coming up with names as well, but meh.

[Mr. K]

I am an older Lemmings fan.

I was given the DOS version's floppy disk when I was about 3 or 4, and taught how to install and play it.  Since the only other games I had on that lovely 486 that was there for me (which used to belong to my grandparents but now I own and still play on) were silly "learn to read" edutainment titles and I already knew how to read, I pretty much exclusively played Lemmings.  However, I never got past Tricky back then.

I drew Lemmings an awful lot then, although somehow I got confused and through their green tufts of hair were little green baseball caps bobbing up and down on their heads.  So I drew them with baseball caps.  I figured out my mistake much later.  I also made my own Lemmings soundtrack when I was about 5 by putting a tape recorder by the speaker of the computer and recording each level's music.  Sometimes I also taped myself playing the game to compare how fast I was beating levels.  (Even now, listening to the tapes, I can "see" the screen using the audio)

Due to how early its awesomeness was implanted into my brain, it's almost always been important to me.

[Chmera]

...I honestly feel left out here. XP I feel like a newb all over again.

But seriously, the game's played a big part. It actually pretty much introduced me to the internet. Well, it started me looking to use it for something other than a convenient place to find endless numbers of Petz breeds. I made my first online friend through it, desperate to find some degree of fellowship, and that's when I came across Lee's Lemmings Paintball Page, and emailed its owner: Lee, of course. We talked regularly on MSN for about a year, then he fell off the face of the internet... I never saw him again.
Regardless, with newfound confidence, resolve and proper use of the English language, I found my way to the last form of this forum, back at Lemmingswelt.de. Back then I went under the name Astral or Astral Lemming, due to lack of imagination. My tradition of using the colour purple on a few of my other personas,  all of which, later on, interestingly never quite managed to overtake Ch'mera(who's changed a lot over the years, but that's quite another story). And through this I found Homestar Runner, and thus wikis, and thus IRC, and thus more friends, and roleplay, too, and through that I started to create an entire Lemmingsverse of my own, which is still my pet project.

So yeah, story of the start of life as I now know it.

[Mr. K]

I first had the game installed (no idea who by) onto an old 486 (I was 4 at the time, I think), on which I couldn't play it as we didn't have a mouse or joystick and I didn't know the keyboard controls. After being unable to find them out, and receiving Commander Keen 4 (another series which I still enjoy now), I gave up on Lemmings.
About half a year later, received a Sega Master System, and Lemmings was one of the games. An instant favourite. During this time I also received a Windows 95 Pentium PC, which Lemmings was also installed on. Due to the presence of a mouse, I was able to play it. I kept switching between the two versions, I was usually much further ahead on the PC version. (Although I completed Fun first on the Sega version).
Just under a year later, I had reached Mayhem 29 (Save me!) on the PC version, and was unable to complete it. It wasn't long after that I reached the same point on the Sega version - and to my delight, it was an entirely different(and much easier) level. So in the end, I beat the Sega version before the PC version.
I eventually found the code for Level 30 Mayhem on PC, and used it to play that level, and beat it.
I never did end up beating Save Me until about 5 years ago, though.
I got the Holiday Lemmings games (93 and 94) at some point too, these were also great. Didn't ever complete them, though.

About a year after THAT, I got Lemmings 3D as well. If I thought the original was good, L3D was... wow. A great game. I had completed every level within a few months, but it was fun to play them over and over again, more so than the original. I was kind of disappointed with the challenge value though - the only three levels that gave me much trouble were "Chocolate Drop", "Fun Fair" and "Castle Peralus". I did manage to complete those eventually, however. A lot of the other levels, too, were solved through backroutes - most notably "Final Maze", which I've still never sovled by the intended solution (I wouldn't even know where to start). Seriously, L3D must have more backroutes than every other official game combined... but it's still great.

Until discovering level editors and stuff, after L3D I slowly lost interest. But when I found level editors... yeah, back into business! the "Lemmings Plus" series being my favourite creations, of course. Still need to get around to doing Lemmings Plus 4 sometime...

[MR_OJR]

I've been playing Lemmings one way or another since about 1992/3, and have always loved it... I only really completed it fully in about 2001/2 on WinLemm / Amiga but then again it's not just about getting to the end of the levels but enjoying them!

I also have a bit of an obsession of drawing them... they've almost become part of my signature now :-P

I'm glad that I've finally found a community that isn't completely dead!

[Chmera]

So you're a fellow artist, huh? =P

[MR_OJR]

Ya could say I'm a bit of a doodler :-P

[Chmera]

Maybe you should chip in on the art thread in the Fandom Corner? We could do with a little more activity there. 

[MR_OJR]

Oooh I might do actually!! 

[Dullstar]

I liked lemmings as a kid a lot. I'd like to make a remake of a level I remember seeing along time ago, but apparently does not actually exist. Don't ask how that happened, because I do not know. It was probably actually a vague early memory of Don't Let Your Eyes Deceive You.