Trackball

A trackball is essentially  an upside down mouse, and since Lemmings was originally controled via a mouse, it was the idea Arcade solution.

Level1 on the Arcade

The Arcade version had some odd bugs, one of which was that if you managed to place a lemming on top of the level, they could walk right over the top of it!.

Original Drawings

Gary drew these to show Psygnosis what the lemmings might actually look like.

The Complete History of
Lemmings
By
Mike Dailly

(Part 4)

The Arcade version of Lemmings

When the Arcade machine was being written, the CEO of Data East apparently wouldn't start a meeting without challenging the person to a 2 player version of lemmings (according to Dave that is). 

I've never been quite sure why no one has ever done a proper multiplayer Lemmings game since, and these days with and internet connection, it would be a great game to play.

The arcade version is also where the fast forward of Lemmings 2 came from, once we saw it in the Arcade version, we realised we just had to have it. It's now very hard to play the original Lemmings without the fast forward.

The arcade version was controlled with the joystick or a trackball and was still in the very early stages when it was canceled. I still have the original prototype here, rescued from the skip when DMA moved from Dundee to Edinburgh.

Lemmings book

Another little known fact, was that Psygnosis also did a book of solutions, written by Mark Tsai (current owner of Lemmings.com), and A.J. Aranyosi, it included 16 new levels from the "oh no, More lemmings" level set. This book is now well out of print, but is ISBN:1-55958-188-3 in case you want to look for it.

It was printed in black and white pages, and gave detailed descriptions on how to complete each level from Lemmings and  the new bonus levels.

The Lemmings front end was also going to look very different initially. We came up with the idea of lemmings holding up cards, like in stadiums to spell stuff out. The rest of the lemmings were going to be doing lots of other funny amins.

So I set about doing this. I had a screen full of lemmings, all animating differently, and some holding up cards. This was neat, but confusing... so it was eventually dropped.

The official drawings were done by Gary, however they were done well after the game was underway. They had to be drawn since Psygnosis kept asking us what they really looked like for boxes and adverts, and we couldn't tell them. So Gary knocked up these sketches to give them the basic idea.

All the 6's.....

We also recieved various comments back from the public, one of which sent our eyes rolling! The level 666 was recieved very badly in places, since many thought this was a direct effort to put the devil over as being "cool" or whatever.

However, it all started out as me trying to get a level full of "fives", but while I could get 55 of each skill, 5min, 55 seconds for the timer, I couldn't get 55% of lemmings to save; only 66% (it has since been pointed out that if I'd change the number of lemmings, I could have easily gotten 55%). So it changed to 6. Then since it was in the hell level, I though of 666.

I never thought it would cause quite the stir it did, although I still say your helping them escaping from hell it to a far better land!

Arcade Into

While the arcade version appeared to have fewer colours, it had stacks of hardware sprites so there was no danger of it slowing down like some versions.

Old Loading screen

This was the original loading picture Scott drew, but it was only ever used on the editor disks.