"Save 'em Ups"

[Prob Lem]

Back when Lemmings defined the genre known around these parts as the "Interactive Rodent Simulation", British games magazines half-jokingly termed it a "Save 'em Up", to match the then-common names of popular genres such as "Beat 'em Up" and "Shoot 'em Up".

As we all know, a Save 'em Up is not a game where rescuing someone or something is merely a later objective or part of the plot (as is the case with rescuing Princess Peach in Super Mario Bros., for example), but a game where the entire point of the gameplay hinges on this mechanic, as it does in Lemmings - otherwise, quite a lot of unrelated, non-Save 'em Up games could be counted as Save 'em Ups, and then things would get confusing. http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/scared.gif" alt=":scared:" title="Scared" class="smiley" />

It's often been said that Lemmings was the first game where the main gameplay objective is to save helpless creatures, but, whilst Lemmings is (as far as I know) the first game to play as it does, it was not the first Save 'em Up. There are actually at least six earlier games of this sort, and it seems to me that, whilst lists of "Lemmings clones" exist out there that include both commercial releases and fan-made ones, commercial releases in the Save 'em Up genre as a whole could stand to be better-documented. The following is the beginning of an effort to do so (in chronological order) - please contribute or suggest games that need listing if you find the idea interesting! http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/thumbsup.gif" alt=":thumbsup:" title="Thumbs Up" class="smiley" />

The first Save 'em Up that I'm aware of is the Nintendo Game & Watch game, http://www.mariowiki.com/Fire_(Game_&_Watch)" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">Fire, released in 1980. In this game, you move two firemen who are holding a trampoline, in order to rescue people who are jumping from the windows of a burning building. It has been remade a few times, with both classic and modernised forms, in various installments of the Game & Watch Gallery series for the Game Boy, Game Boy Colour, and Game Boy Advance.

The second game is http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=105" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">Cosmic Ark, which was made by Imagic for the Atari 2600 in 1982. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first example of a Save 'em Up on a home machine (and it's also the first known sequel to a home video game, too!). Cosmic Ark's premise involves piloting a spaceship to distant planets in a dying solar system, in order to rescue the creatures that inhabit them so as to prevent their extinction. This is the first Save 'em Up that involves saving animals from a terrible fate.

The third entry here is the coincidentally-titled http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw9c6s1rces" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">Lemming Syndrome, by Dynabyte, released in 1983 for the BBC Microcomputer (a series of computers which were commonplace in British schools in the 1980s and 1990s, and which occupy more-or-less the same cultural space as the Apple II does in North America). It's really just a clone of Fire that's set on a broken bridge, but it lacks the differing heights for the people doing the jumping.

The fourth Save 'em Up title is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicky" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">Flicky, an arcade game released by Sega in 1984. In it, you guide a bluebird named Flicky around platform-filled levels in order to gather up chicks (known collectively as Chirps), who will follow him around until they're either hit and broken away from him by an enemy (at which point Flicky needs to grab them again), or until he takes them to each level's exit.

The fifth such game that I know of is the Commodore 64 version of the Dizzy series spin-off game, http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=733" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">Kwik Snax, released by Codemasters in 1990. There is a ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC game by this name as well, but it is actually completely different and, crucially, it is not a Save 'em Up. Kwik Snax for the C64 basically puts the game-mechanics of Flicky into a top-down, Pac-Man style maze, in which you have to guide Dizzy around so that he can gather up small, rodent-like creatures known as Fluffles. This seems to be the first Save 'em Up to be centred around rescuing creatures of the rodent persuasion.

The sixth pre-Lemmings Save 'em Up that I know of is a special case. It is http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/savemary/savemary.htm" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">Save Mary! for the Atari 2600, and it was completed and due for release by Atari in 1990 (after apparently having been worked on since 1988), but ultimately never made it to the market at that time - it was not actually officially released until it was included in the game selection on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Flashback#Atari_Flashback_2" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">Atari Flashback 2 console in 2004. In Save Mary!, you must drop girders and blocks into a quickly-flooding valley, so that Mary, who is trapped at the bottom, can climb up to safety before she drowns.

I don't know of any other pre-Lemmings Save 'em Ups, so I guess up next is Lemmings, and everything that came after it (including its own sequels). http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/laugh.gif" alt=":D" title="Laugh" class="smiley" /> That said, I'd like to wait for more input first, just in case any other early commercially-released Save 'em Ups that I don't yet know about exist.

Incidentally, if I've put this in the wrong section, please could a moderator move it? I honestly wasn't sure if it should go in Lemmings Discussion (since it's about documenting the genre that Lemmings undeniably defined), or in the Video Games section in Off Topic (because it deals with a lot of other games as well).

[ccexplore]

Those popular-genre names like "shoot 'em up" work because sadly, so many games in those categories do them with such little imagination that many are practically just graphical swaps of one another.  Whereas even just within the few examples you offered for "save 'em up", the gameplay feels vastly different and distinct from each other.

Anyway, nice job with the research and such. http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/thumbsup.gif" alt=":thumbsup:" title="Thumbs Up" class="smiley" /> Given that "save 'em up" isn't really that common a term it showed a lot of knowledge of video/computer game history.

[Luis]

Save 'em up doesn't sound right, especially in a sentence.

Let's beat 'em up.

Time to shoot 'em up.

We gotta save 'em up. Yeah that sounds weird.

[namida]

The other two only make sense because we've been using them so much for so long. Gramatically, they make no sense whatsoever really.

[Luis]

Either way, puzzle is the best term for Lemmings.

[ccexplore]

"Puzzle" constitutes a pretty vast and somewhat vague category though that would also include games like crosswords and Sudoku.

[Clam]

"Saving up" means putting some away to use later, eg. saving up money to buy something. But what are we saving up lemmings for? Not something edible I hope (Cream of Lemming Soup?) http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/scared.gif" alt=":scared:" title="Scared" class="smiley" />

[namida]

"Puzzle" describes Lemmings in the same way "Action" describes, well, any FPS. Correct, but very general.

[Prob Lem]

Anyway, nice job with the research and such. http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/thumbsup.gif" alt=":thumbsup:" title="Thumbs Up" class="smiley" /> Given that "save 'em up" isn't really that common a term it showed a lot of knowledge of video/computer game history.

Heh, thanks very much. http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/thumbsup.gif" alt=":thumbsup:" title="Thumbs Up" class="smiley" /> I like to do my bit to make sure that the bits of computing and gaming history that I've been around for don't get lost due to hybrid-storm with the computing/gaming history of other cultures and regions. (British gaming culture is particularly threatened, it seems, as I often see unresearched prattle in magazines that speaks of other countries' very different history, and claims our own was the same... http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/sad.gif" alt=":(" title="Sad" class="smiley" /> )

"Saving up" means putting some away to use later, eg. saving up money to buy something. But what are we saving up lemmings for? Not something edible I hope (Cream of Lemming Soup?) http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/scared.gif" alt=":scared:" title="Scared" class="smiley" />

I'm looking at your avatar and suspecting that you *want* that soup, Clam, you understand. http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/winktounge.gif" alt=";P" title="Wink-Tongue" class="smiley" />

Anyhow, to address the issue of grammar (sorry, I don't want to make this reply a flood of quotes!), I'm in agreement with namida that none of the genre monikers make much sense if you think about them. They're just what used to be in common usage, and thus are why "Save 'em Up" is so rendered.

As for puzzle being (one of?) the best descriptions for Lemmings, it is indeed correct (and I also agree that it's very general), but this isn't so much about the definition of Lemmings itself, as it is about the wider landscape of games from before and after it that bear relation to it, where the objective is to rescue NPCs from what's usually some sort of unpleasant fate.

On that note, I've got several games written down from the era of Lemmings and its contemporaries, now. I did have to leave out a game that's often cited as being the first "Lemmings clone", though. That one's The Humans, by GameTek, from 1992. The problem is, whilst some elements are shared, NPC-rescue is not the objective; Not only do you have direct control over the characters, but also the goal of each level is not necessarily just to get the humans to the exit. It is notable for one thing, though - http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=807354&postcount=327" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">some very unflattering (and NSFW) text hidden in the Amiga CD32 port, and applied as the label of the disc (though at the time, no consumer could actually have read it). Apparently the guy who worked on it really didn't like it!