Disagree about 3D Lemmings. Yes, the camera controls sucked, but the extra dimension opens up tons of interesting puzzles and interactions, and it's also aesthetically pleasing to watch them move around and change 3D objects.
There's an open-source engine for it called Loap that comes with a custom level pack, and I think the block-based design holds up better than the fiddly Revolutions.
Appeals to all groups, released on every platform. Then come the sequels, special editions (like Christmas Lemmings), and then it just kind of faded away.
Lemmings just didn't get a movie and merchandising.
Lemmings was one of the 3-5 inspirations for the Commandos games:
- giving different tasks to characters over the level to finish it. Lost Vikings won over Cannonfodder and the Commandos would be very defined characters not a mass of generic soldiers.
- levels structured as "bubbles" of logical challenge; after you solve one you typically move on to the next one, eventually reaching the level finish.
The Commandos series also parallels a bit of the history, fizzling out very quickly after Commandos 2, when it might have seemed that the sky was the limit for the series.
Same here! However a friend had an Amiga and the music there was sample-based like a demoscene 'tracker' (but in a proprietary format), so it also had that lovely sample-based aspect ;) I still listen to extracted/covered versions of some of those to this day!
> For a while there in the early 1990s, there seemed to be good reason to believe that Lemmings was on its way to becoming one of gaming’s perennial franchises. Developed by DMA Design of Dundee, Scotland, the original Lemmings game took the world by storm upon its release in 1991
DMA Design later created the GTA series and was rebranded Rockstar North when they were acquired by Take-Two. So they did end up creating a giant franchise (though "perennial" could certainly be debated given the gap between GTA 5 and GTA 6).
In any case the principles involved have probably been too busy sleeping on mountains of GTA 1-6 money to lament the untimely death of Lemmings too much.
That said, as a gamer I personally prefer Lemmings.
There's an open-source engine for it called Loap that comes with a custom level pack, and I think the block-based design holds up better than the fiddly Revolutions.
Appeals to all groups, released on every platform. Then come the sequels, special editions (like Christmas Lemmings), and then it just kind of faded away.
Lemmings just didn't get a movie and merchandising.
The Commandos series also parallels a bit of the history, fizzling out very quickly after Commandos 2, when it might have seemed that the sky was the limit for the series.
https://www.camanis.net/lemmings/music.php
Such a classic sound! Reminds me of the similarly brilliant Star Control II soundtrack (which was also tracker music)!
DMA Design later created the GTA series and was rebranded Rockstar North when they were acquired by Take-Two. So they did end up creating a giant franchise (though "perennial" could certainly be debated given the gap between GTA 5 and GTA 6).
In any case the principles involved have probably been too busy sleeping on mountains of GTA 1-6 money to lament the untimely death of Lemmings too much.
That said, as a gamer I personally prefer Lemmings.
I can also still hear "First there was Menace... Now, Psygnosis presents... a DMA Design game... Blood Money. (there's a whole lot more coming...)".
DMA had very good sound design for the time.