Lemmings
Lemmings, developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis in 1991. Played in Spectrum 128k mode.
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Player's Review
"Lemmings VOTED THE EUROPEAN GAME OF THE YEAR
"Psygnosis have done the impossible by squeezing Lemmings into the Spectrum... an excellent conversion." Crash - 91% A CRASH Smash
"Absolutely brilliant! Hurrah for the Lemmings game! Lemmings has everything it needs to make it speedy and fun to play.". Your Sinclair."
The box doesnt say much but at least it uses actual Spectrum Screenshots to entice you to buy the game. Before I moved onto the C64 I had played a demo version of this on my Spectrum +3 and it was certainly interesting to see this 16bit game running on my Spectrum. It wasn't till a little while later I got to try the full game after borrowing from a friend who was still chugging along with a 48k spectrum. This conversion is both surprising that it exists and a disappointment at the same time as this was at the very end of the Spectrum era, its last game along with Dr Who and should have been its swansong but it was made for 48k owners and severely limited by it and feels like more of a low effort cash grab from the last remaining Spectrum followers.
I honestly believe it should have been a 128k only game making use of it's extra abilities and memory to be up there with the very best Spectrum games. Instead all 128k owners got was the 48k game, tape loading and all with a single AY tune that plays on every level maybe using only 50k in total, what a joke considering the ay music exists for cpc and st. The game doesnt even save previously loaded in levels in ram and for the 48k owner, not even the current level. If you fail you would have to rewind the tape a bit and reload the level and the game doesnt exactly make this clear. This could have been the one game that makes extensive use of the floppy disk for +3 owners but it wasn't to be. Well enough ranting.
The game comes on a double sided C90 cassette featuring 60 levels. The base game loads quite quickly and opens with a 48k beeper tune. After reading the credits it then loads each individual levels as you play them. It is important to stop and start the tape between each level else you will face problems if you lose tape position. If you use a passcode it will give error messages until it finally lands on the level chosen. Level loading can sometimes take longer than actual playing the level so it all adds up making 60 levels more than enough. That's 15 levels for each of the four difficulties(Fun, Tricky, Taxing, Mayhem) The biggest hindrance (apart from the gfx) is the controls. You can use the Joystick to move the curser but it can be a bit over sensitive so the Keyboard is being used here. It's only slightly better as you O,P,Q and A around the screen using M to select. Space pauses but its of little use as you can select abilities or move the pointer or screen in this state. L and Enter scroll the screen. Z and Z cycles the abilities although you can also use the number keys. N is useful for locking onto a lemming so you can still select one that's getting lost in the crowd. CapsShift+SymShift Nukes. But that's not all, as there are no Sound effects you cant easily tell when your builder is going to run out of bricks.
The Longplay shows playing through all 60 levels. Many levels are slightly different to their 16 bit counterparts taking the limitation of the spectrum in mind so solutions may be different. Maps are smaller and the maximum amount of lemmings is 20 and the save amount is adjusted to be less stressful in mind of the controls. I am by no means playing optimally given the controls and the solutions shown may not be the intended ones. As long as I complete the level I am happy although I do try to save all I can. Level loading has been cut out saving an hour of additional runtime.
Overall, Lemmings is quite an achievement having it running on the spectrum yet disappointing that it makes no real use of 128k machines. No reason at all we couldn't have had at least more audio tracks, an extra 30 seconds loading at the start preloading tracks would have been most welcome. I think more could have been done graphically as well after seeing the game boy version although i realise that has four shades of grey to work with.
In 2020 A non official reworked version was released which features a lot more music with some taken from the Atari St and Amstrad CPC versions (As they use the same AY audio) but that not all as it also doubles the speed of the game and to top things off it comes on a disk with near instant loading. This is what the game should have been in 1991.
00:00:00 Title screen
00:01:25 Fun Levels
00:34:52 Tricky Levels
01:12:10 Taxing Levels
01:56:19 Mayhem levels
"Psygnosis have done the impossible by squeezing Lemmings into the Spectrum... an excellent conversion." Crash - 91% A CRASH Smash
"Absolutely brilliant! Hurrah for the Lemmings game! Lemmings has everything it needs to make it speedy and fun to play.". Your Sinclair."
The box doesnt say much but at least it uses actual Spectrum Screenshots to entice you to buy the game. Before I moved onto the C64 I had played a demo version of this on my Spectrum +3 and it was certainly interesting to see this 16bit game running on my Spectrum. It wasn't till a little while later I got to try the full game after borrowing from a friend who was still chugging along with a 48k spectrum. This conversion is both surprising that it exists and a disappointment at the same time as this was at the very end of the Spectrum era, its last game along with Dr Who and should have been its swansong but it was made for 48k owners and severely limited by it and feels like more of a low effort cash grab from the last remaining Spectrum followers.
I honestly believe it should have been a 128k only game making use of it's extra abilities and memory to be up there with the very best Spectrum games. Instead all 128k owners got was the 48k game, tape loading and all with a single AY tune that plays on every level maybe using only 50k in total, what a joke considering the ay music exists for cpc and st. The game doesnt even save previously loaded in levels in ram and for the 48k owner, not even the current level. If you fail you would have to rewind the tape a bit and reload the level and the game doesnt exactly make this clear. This could have been the one game that makes extensive use of the floppy disk for +3 owners but it wasn't to be. Well enough ranting.
The game comes on a double sided C90 cassette featuring 60 levels. The base game loads quite quickly and opens with a 48k beeper tune. After reading the credits it then loads each individual levels as you play them. It is important to stop and start the tape between each level else you will face problems if you lose tape position. If you use a passcode it will give error messages until it finally lands on the level chosen. Level loading can sometimes take longer than actual playing the level so it all adds up making 60 levels more than enough. That's 15 levels for each of the four difficulties(Fun, Tricky, Taxing, Mayhem) The biggest hindrance (apart from the gfx) is the controls. You can use the Joystick to move the curser but it can be a bit over sensitive so the Keyboard is being used here. It's only slightly better as you O,P,Q and A around the screen using M to select. Space pauses but its of little use as you can select abilities or move the pointer or screen in this state. L and Enter scroll the screen. Z and Z cycles the abilities although you can also use the number keys. N is useful for locking onto a lemming so you can still select one that's getting lost in the crowd. CapsShift+SymShift Nukes. But that's not all, as there are no Sound effects you cant easily tell when your builder is going to run out of bricks.
The Longplay shows playing through all 60 levels. Many levels are slightly different to their 16 bit counterparts taking the limitation of the spectrum in mind so solutions may be different. Maps are smaller and the maximum amount of lemmings is 20 and the save amount is adjusted to be less stressful in mind of the controls. I am by no means playing optimally given the controls and the solutions shown may not be the intended ones. As long as I complete the level I am happy although I do try to save all I can. Level loading has been cut out saving an hour of additional runtime.
Overall, Lemmings is quite an achievement having it running on the spectrum yet disappointing that it makes no real use of 128k machines. No reason at all we couldn't have had at least more audio tracks, an extra 30 seconds loading at the start preloading tracks would have been most welcome. I think more could have been done graphically as well after seeing the game boy version although i realise that has four shades of grey to work with.
In 2020 A non official reworked version was released which features a lot more music with some taken from the Atari St and Amstrad CPC versions (As they use the same AY audio) but that not all as it also doubles the speed of the game and to top things off it comes on a disk with near instant loading. This is what the game should have been in 1991.
00:00:00 Title screen
00:01:25 Fun Levels
00:34:52 Tricky Levels
01:12:10 Taxing Levels
01:56:19 Mayhem levels
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