I like the MD version. Despite of some levels from the original being missing and/or replaced by Oh No! More Lemmings levels, there's one called *SUNSOFT Special* featuring Hebereke characters as terrain, complete with their own music.
The Acorn port is the best version I've played but have to say how impressive the Master System port is. A fantastic version - it's unbelievable how well it plays.
The reason the intro is so dark is they didn't convert the RGB values from RGB4 of the Amiga to RGB3 of the Mega Drive. Sloppy. I really enjoy playing Lemmings on my Super Famicom and used to play this for hours on my Amiga in the 90s.
The Amiga will always be my favourite port, with the likes of the C64 breaking all the rules by exceeding the 8 sprite limit! I'm guessing they are not actual sprites, but still looks great :)
on the c64 they made a gfx layer out of multiplexed sprite, that is the level gfx, and the lemmings are drawn into a character sets. thats why the view is narrow you can have max 24 char wide gfx made out of 8 sprites.
Wow, an Ocean port sucking. Quelle surprise ! Seriously though, the ZX Spectrum version not being the worst and the Master System version being better than the Mega Drive version are both surprising. Thanks for the massive undertaking of doing Lemmings.
Also the play area for the C64 version was due its used 7 multiplexed sprites for the background (last one was for the mouse pointer), Lemmings used software sprites. That hence you could have many lemmings on the C64 port, not limited to 8 (but can been a bit slow). Im also liked the SMS version as well.
My, I suppose they did that to allow themselves to modify any pixel on screen which they would not have been able to do as smoothly when using tiles. An interesting if very constraining choice. I am pretty sure they could have managed something viable with background tiles.
Yes. Its a nice choice. There was a interview as the programmer has tried various methods and this one seens was the best. Its a interesting choice using "bitmap" that way using sprites. But that means you could have many more lemmings using software sprites, not limited to 8 (or 7 with the cursor) without flicker.
I have one. They are pretty expensive if you try and buy one on Ebay. Its CPU is a Z80B running at nearly twice the speed of the Z80 in the speccy. It has a 128 colour palette with 16 colours on screen. It's quite similar in many ways to an Atari St, certainly has better sound but with a worse processor. Sadly MGT really messed up with software at the start and had to create their own software house. The conversion of lemmings was done by Chris White who also did an excellent conversion of Prince of Persia. If the machine had come out around a year earlier like planned it could have done very well. Sadly they timed it perfectly along with a big recession in the UK and lack luster support. MGT went bankrupt and reformed as SAM co and ran for a few more years until it became obvious it wasn't going to be a big seller.
Oh, and you could play spectrum 48k games on it. Although if they had advanced copy write protection then you couldn't. 128k games were possible with a bit of modification to the games code.
The first time I ever saw or heard of Lemmings, it was the Amiga version. I never actually had one, it was at a computer summer program. I hesitate to say "camp" because it was only a couple hours during the day. But the small amount of time I spent with the game at that program left a mark in my memory, and I always have a fondness for the game based on it.
What an incredible undertaking that was! Well done Mark for this epic! My favourite version has always been the Mega Drive version, was surprised to see how it fared here, yet despite its flaws I still love it.
The big kahuna of BOTP has arrived. My fave ports are Amiga itself, Windows 95 and Archimedes for PCs and consoles are Genesis, SNES, PS1 and Master System. Music wise, Mega Drive is the ace of the lot, cuz the FM synth really gives it a dynamic appeal
I can report as I own a CDI and Lemmings that the version on the CDI is actually very good, it has CD-Audio Music and has sound effects but unfortunatly suffers from the CDI issue of only being able to play one sound at a time so if a new sound occurs it cuts off the previous one. It also has a very long animated intro, but then that's a staple on the CDI.
ONG What an undertaking that must have been for you. The music drives me mad after a few minutes.. You have my sympathies Mark! :D It's so odd that all the Sega ports have dark into screens.
At Uni, we fired up the Megadrive version on emulator back in the early noughties and not much work was done for the rest of that week! We also got hooked on the Speccy version of Chuckie Egg at the same time.
Amazing and huge BotP! This is one of my favourite games of all time. Love the Master System version, so many hours playing with this. Many thanks for this video.
Skyrim is suck, I get bored very quickly if I install it Vanilla only fans mods which keep me interest to play but eventually I got bored pretty fast as the game to open world but stiff mechanic at least on Vanilla.
The PC-98 version plays sound samples though the internal speaker, probably because the -86 sound card (which had dedicated PCM support) wasn't available yet. It doesn't sound nearly as bad on real hardware. I much prefer it to the IBM DOS port, tbh. I think the music sounds much nicer and closer to the Amiga original.
Re resolutions, the Amiga original, and all the non-handheld ports, offered output that could be displayed on a 4:3 TV, be it a 368×567i 6 bpp (PAL), or 368×483i 6 bpp (NTSC) set, many at full resolution, the Archimedes and 3DO ALSO offered a complementary VGA set of graphics ~ 640*256 in 16 colours, the systems were capable of SVGA but not a supported option, that ARM SoC powered pair also had the possibility of offering 8 channel, rather than the 4 channel audio of the Amiga, believe the Archimedes port used the original 3 channel tracks + effects, though some other Tracker compositions were used from Lemmings 2, and there were hacks to replace the tracks with compositions of your choosing.
Regarding Lynx Lemmings, the low vertical resolution of the Lynx 102 pixels, was always going to cause issues and some levels had to be redesigned to accommodate this (less 'floors' etc). What really hit me with the Lynx version, wasnt the surprisingly tinny music sounds more at home on the Game Boy Colour), but it's the effect putting icons on the pause screen has on the actual gameplay, you kill the frantic nature, making it a far more sedate experience. Seem to remember you lost the special effects when you nuked your lemmings. Nice scaling on the intro though. Coders put in the message when you complete the game they'd like to consider converting Lemmings 2 to the Lynx, IF the Lynx was still around in a few years time, it wasn't 😭
Good video. I remember first seeing this game when I was taking commercial art in collage. We had Amigas in my class and someone brought it in. Later on I got the PC version and then the Genesis version. I remember getting the Genesis version over the SNES because people said it looked closer to the Amiga version. Being hearing impaired, I never was aware of that version having messed up sounding voices until I saw this video.
some ports you also missing such as: Toshiba J-3100 (1991) Macintosh (1992) Microsoft Windows 95 (1996) PS1 (1998), developed by Distinctive Developments and published by Psygnosis unofficial GBA (2005), created by Zapf Bandit PSP/PS2/PS Mobile (2007) by Team 17, the same developer behind Worms and IOS/Android (2018) by Sad Puppy and published by Exient Games
I have both the Play Station and the Japanese SNES versions but the YIPPPEEE noise on the Play Station version every time a Lemming makes it home fries your brain pretty quickly but it has a fast forward button that the SNES version doesn't have so each version has an advantage or disadvantage. The fast forward button really is a game changer, especially in a level where that one last Lemming is still a mile away from home.
Windows 95 port was my "first" foray, bought a fully boxed copy at our Cash Converters when I was in my early teens for a couple of quid c: Ran it on the hand-me-down Windows 95 PC I had before the monitor kinda blew up in my room...and that was the end of that :P
Regarding the control "problems" on the C64 version, it's actually one of the few games, that support the Commodore 1351 Mouse. It's actually quite comfortable to play with mouse and keyboard.
What a comparison ! Great work ! I would love to play Lemming on a Real GameBoy but not that Ocean port. By the way, there is also an official Win95 port and it was ok as far as I remember.
Played the hell out of the Acorn version at school. Fantastic game, a lot of fun with excellent music. The Master System version is very good, technically excellent and plays well.
Im guess the play area got smaller on Mega Drive is propertry due memory. Lemmings was a game designed with full bitmap graphics in mind, not tiles (unlike Lemmings 2). Here you have much more ram on the Amiga than Mega Drive had. That shows clearly on some of the ports. Regardless its still a good port and good sound driver as well. PS. Sorry for multiply posts, wanted them seperated for ports.
btw the original Amiga game could hold a 1600x160px wide screen (5 bitmapped screens), which consumed about 128kb ram alone. Mega Drive has only 64kb video ram for the tiles. Most levels in the original did actuelly not fully used it anyway and there is a lots of black backgrounds in this game as well (due nature of the game). So you could cut down without too much sacrifice really. Some ports might only uses 2 or 3 screens per level and this can still works well.
I know this game so popular among old PC fans but whoa this is basically like Doom puzzle counterpart, I more surprise there no challenge like Lemming run on Everything.
@@pokepress pfft if you not afraid to be sue by Capcom sure, the reason why Doom run everything exist coz Doom 1 already in shareware territory and even Bethesda cannot sue anyone for porting Doom 1, and I bet even Lemmings also in Shareware territory.
6502 machines (and variants) have slow versions. The Amiga stands out with the Hardware Sprite mouse, which registers the commands easier. Archie has the same resolution as the Amiga/ST.
PC DOS port is unique in a way that it let you choose machine type. Adjusting the way game works. Least demanding mode has very choppy mouse and no palette switching mid-screen (software solution for amiga Copper). More demanding options give very responsive mouse cursor and display more than 16 colors on screen in 16 color VGA mode. This is so unusual for a PC game that Lemmings has broken colors in DOSBox. Amiga port uses copper to not only change palette but also change resolution. Upper part of the screen is 320x240 while lower with toolbar is 640x240. PC port is using 640x480 for menus and level preview in VGA mode, while EGA mode is using 640x350 with custom palette from 64 colors. Level preview also has palette switch mid-screen which probably makes Lemmings the only game that display more than 16 colors at once on EGA cards. Lemmings on PC are so bizarre that they will break many 3rd party software that is meant to run in the background. Great game to test compatibility of any PC.
@@Leeki85 'Amiga port uses copper to not only change palette but also change resolution. Upper part of the screen is 320x240 while lower with toolbar is 640x240.' ?? No kidding, that's BS.
@@Archimedes75009 Wrong. Amiga is low res for the main game screen, and then the copper changes the screen resolution to hires for the select buttons at the bottom of the screen, anyone can check it out for themselves, no one needs to lie about it dude!
Back in the 90s, every Amiga owner I knew had a pirated copy of this game. I played through every level, though not in a single sitting. I later learned that it was a PAL version that was never fixed for NTSC. The screen was fine, but the whole game ran faster than it should have, making some of the levels even harder than they would have been if I'd been playing an NTSC version! I also played through the C64 version in an emulator just to see how well done it was. It supports a mouse (the game I mean), so that's what I used to play it. Not quite as smooth as on an Amiga, but it worked well. There's also a PSP version with more cartoon-like graphics. It has stupid controls though. They used the D-pad for moving the cursor and the analog stick for scrolling the screen! Who the hell looks at a game that originally used a mouse, ports it to a system with analog controls and decides to use the digital controls instead? Anyway, good job on the video. :)
If there is a way to play a good version of these games with CD audio, mouse controls and Linux compatibility, I would be all for it! It sucks that this franchise has mostly been abandoned and hasn't even gotten rereleases for modern systems. The last iterations of Lemmings I know of, is Lemmings Touch for the PSVita and Lemmings for mobile where they changed the look of them, which seems to make them look more like their original in-game sprites and less like The Wombles.
This game would've made perfect sense on the Atari 8 bit (Especially the 130XE with the faster CPU and 128K RAM) with it's fast CPU and various graphics modes.
The commercial market for the Atari 8-bit range was long gone by the time Lemmings hit, they did receive :The Brundles... a Lemmings clone, released in 1993, which knocked-off Lemmings artwork on the cover of its manual.
Playing the original A500 release of Lemmings on an A1200 (or other more powerful Ami) resulted in a much better frame rate, especially in the 2 player mode.
I quite liked the GB version of Lemmings as a kid and I swear that you could speed up and slow down the lemmings. Also are you sure the slow speed is not an issue with what ever emulator you are using, I don't remember it being slow but perhaps I was just used to it.
@@RetroCore It is a feature. It's like you would mention VR, 3D, or EyeToy works. You also mention in several videos about one button Joystick controls. I like your comparisons. But this is a vital reason for the Amiga version to stand out also. Yes, I am an Amiga fan but I fully agree that OutRun for Amiga is bad ;)
The Genesis/MD version has the best music out of all the 8/16 bit versions of the game. Maybe I'm biased because it was the version of the game I owned as a kid lol
Since you mentioned the Archimedes, at school we had 12 BBC Micros and 1 Archimedes in our one and only computer lesson, the creepy teacher’s pet *always* got the Archimedes and would play Virus/Zarch whilst we played `educational math games`. Still angry about it.
@@RetroCore Tracked down the main game we played on the BBC Micro, it was 'Yellow River Kingdom'. Was playing that whilst the guy behind me was playing Virus..
I had lemmings originally on master system. Got fond memories of playing this at my grans house on my game gear via the master converter. How the hell did I even see them sprites?? I later had the megadrive version and loved the music to it.
Amiga version was a little special for using a hardware feature to make the control panel a higher resolution mode than the main play area. Archimedes version had a higher resolution than the Amiga version? Certainly not apparent by looking at it. Perhaps the Archie was underappreciated in its day, but it's probably enough that it pioneered the CPU line that dominates pretty much everything that isn't running Intel/AMD.
On the video the Arch' doesn't look higher since that capture was at native resolution then upscailed to 1080p for the video. The Amiga footage was actually captured at 1080p so it wasn't upscailed. The end result is both versions looked very much the same.
Whats weird is i used to play lemmings the master system version at my grans house on the game gear via a master system converter... curious of differences Also how the hell did I even see the sprites on such a screen!
@@RetroCore If only Sega could have combined the strengths of East and West, the way Nintendo and Sony did. Has anyone else done more to defeat all the forces helping them to succeed?
Classic game, the Amiga original is always the definitive version for me. It just felt so right. PC was very good too. ST version was very good too, thought that music is laughable. I had a demo of the C64 version and was very impressed but looking back now, the shrunken viewing window is a tad cumbersome, though still an excellent port overall. It's a shame we never got the Sam Coupe or Acorn Archimedes here in Australia, with the right marketing and pricing they would have taken off as formats and there could have been more choice for Lemmings fans. I never encountered any console versions back in the day, nobody I knew that had a console owned this on their console, as they would have already had the Amiga or PC version. I have the PS3 version via PSN, gameplay wise it's fine, but no speech! What?!?
The Archimedes was the definitive version. I was so lucky to own this computer that was leaps ahead of the Amiga, ST and PC at the time. I always thought that Windows 95 was a total (but admitedly better) rip-off the RISC OS the Archimedes used.
For Lemmings 2 on gameboy they went with a different developer who used a lot of the same code to port it to the master system but the sms version wasn't released because the cartridge was too expensive.
So many ports! I know you mentioned you couldn't get them all but I was wondering how does the version included on Lemmings & Oh No! More Lemmings for the PSX compares 🤔
@@RetroCore There was a collection named Lemmings & Oh No! More Lemmings for the PSX that came with the original game and expansion pack on one disc. It was only released in the US and Europe.
I was pleasantly surprised of the master system version. It seems to be the best 8bit version perhaps. My favorite is the Amiga version. All deatils from intro to sounds are just as they should. But some ports do look really nice
A mammoth task undertaken here that could only deserve a well earned congratulations and slap on the back! Many thanks Mark, I played this on Amiga and SNES and remember enjoying them both a lot, but now I think I would be cutting my ears off and pulling my eyeballs out Event Horizon style to avoid playing it. Liberate Tuteme Ex Inferis.
Lol, yeah the music is pretty dire on most versions. I've git to say I was not enjoying it. Well, besides one or two tracks on the 3DO version we're acceptable.
Played the hell out of the DOS version as a kid, but I remember it being on CD-ROM with arranged music and Sound Blaster audio, so maybe it was a later version or something... Still though, this must the record for most number of ports of the same game covered in one of your videos. ;)
Great video as always! specially with so much versions of the original game. Long time a haven't visit your channel. I can blame my self, there too much stuff on youtube. Still, love you're channel!
@@RetroCoreGiven how poorly Lemmings sold on the Lynx, which put paid to any conversion of Lemmings 2 for the system, I very much doubt any publisher wanted to risk Lemmings on the Jaguar, given that system fated worse than the Lynx at retail.
This is a game that I never really bothered playing since I'm not really into these "guidance" types of games. But I do find it fascinating when simple games like this or Tetris end up being ported to just about everything, especially when a couple of versions end up being absolute stinkers. I mean, this is such a graphically simple game, how does the Apple ][ GS manage to screw it up so badly? I really love the twangy FM renditions of the tunes on the Mega Drive, though it may not necessarily be the best version. Probe also did a way better job porting this to the SMS/GG than they usually bother to do, and I'd go as far as saying the SMS version may be up there with the best of them. Obviously it's lacking some sound effects, but that's to be expected on a soundchip that has no dedicated sample channel.
Well done on this massive undertaking Mark! Lemmings is one of my favorite games ever. Played it alot as a kid and I finally managed to complete all 100 stages now as an adult. For me the original Amiga version is the best, and Game Gear is the best portable version. It's too bad my GG died so I can't continue my playthrough of it :( . I also own a CD-I and Lemmings for it, and except for an extremely cheesy animated intro, it looks and plays really good too. It has the same arranged soundtrack as the 3DO version. The C64 wins the most unexpected good port for me as I absolutely loved it and the SID versions of the soundtrack. Truly remarkable of the devs to get it running as smooth as it does on the hardware. One stage even had all 100 Lemmings on screen at once! But that made the framerate tank to like 5 fps :D
It's a shame I couldn't show the CDi version. I have a feeling it can't be emulated. I tried 4 different rips of the game in different formats but all has the exact same error.
@@RetroCore Yeah it is a pain to emulate the CD-I. I tried it before and after a lot of hassle I got it to work somewhat in MAME if I remember correctly. The game played ok, but I couldn't get cutscenes to play properly. I unfortunately cannot remember how I set up MAME and the BIOS to get it to work as far as I did. The reason I tried was because my machine suddenly stopped reading discs so I thought the drive was dead. Turned out it was a dead clock-battery. Apparently it makes it so the cd-drive doesn't initialize properly if the battery goes flat and it could no longer hold saves or keep track of time. It took me 4 hours to get it replaced because it was hidden inside the backup chip and it was a pain to carve it out. To my amazement though, it still worked after all that and with a new battery the machine sprung back to life again and reads discs without any problems.
@@RetroCore it is, but if memory serves me right, it was supposed to have been a halfway-point upgrade from the original Apple II series to the Macintosh. Shame, given it could have come with the same speed CPU as the SuFami that came out four years later (IIGS ran at 2.8MHz). It had similar graphical capability to an Amiga 2000, and had an Ensoniq audio chip. Makes it more ironic, since certain Apple Mac LC models even had compatibility cards that were a //e on a few chips.
These little bastards got a ton of ports. Got it for NES, SNES, and Genesis, as well as Lemmings 2 The Tribes on Genesis, need to get that SNES version soon.
As the CD32 is a late version, It's a shame that Psygnosis didn't make the effort to include even just the audio music present in many other CD based versions. The CD32 version is basically the CDTV version. But it remains a fantastic game of course and it's nice you could play it on your CD32 🤗
I played the HELL out of both the Amiga and DOS versions, I have later bought the CDTV copy that is your typical lazy Amiga port like 90% of all the CDTV/CD32 games; the good side is that is maybe one of the very few games for the machine that isn't stupidly expensive, try to get Xenon 2 for it..
With this amount of ports, i never thought you really would do a botp show of it lol. Btw, i hated the NES version, the controls there were such a pain and the port was really lacking in everything else, the other 8 bit ports were far better.
Probably because it was a US system that never sold well in the UK. Lemmings was English after all. The C64, Amiga and ST are also American but did have a following in the UK. The Japanese machine were mostly running Japanese developed ports.
metalcoola, although there wasn't an official conversion for the Atari, there are several unlicensed versions for that machine. Cheers to Eastern Europe again. :-)
I like the MD version. Despite of some levels from the original being missing and/or replaced by Oh No! More Lemmings levels, there's one called *SUNSOFT Special* featuring Hebereke characters as terrain, complete with their own music.
The SunSoft special level is cool.
There was an unlicensed clone of lemmings for the Gameboy called Ant Soldiers, and it does look like it runs better than the official port...
I remember being gobsmacked to see that Lemmings was actually made for the Amstrad when I saw a demo on a magazine covertape.
The Acorn port is the best version I've played but have to say how impressive the Master System port is. A fantastic version - it's unbelievable how well it plays.
The reason the intro is so dark is they didn't convert the RGB values from RGB4 of the Amiga to RGB3 of the Mega Drive. Sloppy. I really enjoy playing Lemmings on my Super Famicom and used to play this for hours on my Amiga in the 90s.
Thanks for explaining about the intro.
The Amiga will always be my favourite port, with the likes of the C64 breaking all the rules by exceeding the 8 sprite limit! I'm guessing they are not actual sprites, but still looks great :)
on the c64 they made a gfx layer out of multiplexed sprite, that is the level gfx, and the lemmings are drawn into a character sets. thats why the view is narrow you can have max 24 char wide gfx made out of 8 sprites.
@@kangarht Thanks, I feel educated :)
7 sprites :-) = 21 chars. The last one was used for the pointer and then that could not been multiplexed.
Wow, an Ocean port sucking. Quelle surprise ! Seriously though, the ZX Spectrum version not being the worst and the Master System version being better than the Mega Drive version are both surprising. Thanks for the massive undertaking of doing Lemmings.
You're welcome. I was quite surprised at how well the Master System turned out.
@@RetroCore Some Spectrum lovers created a new unofficial conversion called Lemmings 128k that is pretty impressive too!
Also the play area for the C64 version was due its used 7 multiplexed sprites for the background (last one was for the mouse pointer), Lemmings used software sprites. That hence you could have many lemmings on the C64 port, not limited to 8 (but can been a bit slow). Im also liked the SMS version as well.
My, I suppose they did that to allow themselves to modify any pixel on screen which they would not have been able to do as smoothly when using tiles.
An interesting if very constraining choice. I am pretty sure they could have managed something viable with background tiles.
Yes. Its a nice choice. There was a interview as the programmer has tried various methods and this one seens was the best. Its a interesting choice using "bitmap" that way using sprites.
But that means you could have many more lemmings using software sprites, not limited to 8 (or 7 with the cursor) without flicker.
Mark: Imma do a comparison video for every port of Lemmings I can find.
Mark's brain: OH NO! (POP)
Lol, yep that was pretty much right.
So, it seems it's really true that Lemmings was ported to every system under the sun.
A gargantuan and great video! Thanks Mark. 😉
Thanks!
Wow, this video does look like it took a massive amount of work. Kudos to you for doing a great job!
Yep, took forever. Hope it ranks a good few thousand views for the effort.
Never heard of the Sam Coupe, interesting we need a console perspective on that!
Sadly they are impossible to find where I live.
A late 80s british 8 bit computer retro compatible with Spectrum 48k
I have one. They are pretty expensive if you try and buy one on Ebay. Its CPU is a Z80B running at nearly twice the speed of the Z80 in the speccy. It has a 128 colour palette with 16 colours on screen. It's quite similar in many ways to an Atari St, certainly has better sound but with a worse processor. Sadly MGT really messed up with software at the start and had to create their own software house. The conversion of lemmings was done by Chris White who also did an excellent conversion of Prince of Persia. If the machine had come out around a year earlier like planned it could have done very well. Sadly they timed it perfectly along with a big recession in the UK and lack luster support. MGT went bankrupt and reformed as SAM co and ran for a few more years until it became obvious it wasn't going to be a big seller.
Oh, and you could play spectrum 48k games on it. Although if they had advanced copy write protection then you couldn't. 128k games were possible with a bit of modification to the games code.
Just looked it up- neat that it had midi in/out options!
The first time I ever saw or heard of Lemmings, it was the Amiga version. I never actually had one, it was at a computer summer program. I hesitate to say "camp" because it was only a couple hours during the day. But the small amount of time I spent with the game at that program left a mark in my memory, and I always have a fondness for the game based on it.
I think every Amiga owner had lemmings. It was the game they could be proud of.
What an incredible undertaking that was! Well done Mark for this epic!
My favourite version has always been the Mega Drive version, was surprised to see how it fared here, yet despite its flaws I still love it.
The MD version isn't bad at all, just a little rough compared to other ports. It was the Sam Coupe and Master System ports that surprised me.
You know a game has a lot of ports when you can find out about a new system (Sam Coupe) from a video like this.
The big kahuna of BOTP has arrived. My fave ports are Amiga itself, Windows 95 and Archimedes for PCs and consoles are Genesis, SNES, PS1 and Master System. Music wise, Mega Drive is the ace of the lot, cuz the FM synth really gives it a dynamic appeal
That broken CDi version lol. That duck had bigger worries with the whole world tearing and glitching asunder.
I can report as I own a CDI and Lemmings that the version on the CDI is actually very good, it has CD-Audio Music and has sound effects but unfortunatly suffers from the CDI issue of only being able to play one sound at a time so if a new sound occurs it cuts off the previous one. It also has a very long animated intro, but then that's a staple on the CDI.
@@trailersic Yeah. I figured there was a good port beyond the emulation nightmare.
ONG What an undertaking that must have been for you. The music drives me mad after a few minutes.. You have my sympathies Mark! :D It's so odd that all the Sega ports have dark into screens.
Lol, the music is horrible for the most part. Can't say I enjoyed listening to it time and time again.
At Uni, we fired up the Megadrive version on emulator back in the early noughties and not much work was done for the rest of that week! We also got hooked on the Speccy version of Chuckie Egg at the same time.
Amazing and huge BotP! This is one of my favourite games of all time. Love the Master System version, so many hours playing with this.
Many thanks for this video.
Skyrim ain't got nothing on Lemmings for ports lol.
Skyrim is suck, I get bored very quickly if I install it Vanilla only fans mods which keep me interest to play but eventually I got bored pretty fast as the game to open world but stiff mechanic at least on Vanilla.
@@bhirawamaylana466 Skyrim is OK, just the story is worse than Oblivion.
Loving the Lemmings music.
Glad someone does 😊
The PC-98 version plays sound samples though the internal speaker, probably because the -86 sound card (which had dedicated PCM support) wasn't available yet. It doesn't sound nearly as bad on real hardware. I much prefer it to the IBM DOS port, tbh. I think the music sounds much nicer and closer to the Amiga original.
There was also a windows version with a fast forward option and CD music (same as on 3DO IIRC).
Re resolutions, the Amiga original, and all the non-handheld ports, offered output that could be displayed on a 4:3 TV, be it a 368×567i 6 bpp (PAL), or 368×483i 6 bpp (NTSC) set, many at full resolution, the Archimedes and 3DO ALSO offered a complementary VGA set of graphics ~ 640*256 in 16 colours, the systems were capable of SVGA but not a supported option, that ARM SoC powered pair also had the possibility of offering 8 channel, rather than the 4 channel audio of the Amiga, believe the Archimedes port used the original 3 channel tracks + effects, though some other Tracker compositions were used from Lemmings 2, and there were hacks to replace the tracks with compositions of your choosing.
That was a massive amount of work to do. So many Lemmings versions, but I love the Archimedes one
Thank you Mark. That was an epic botp. You even liked the Amstrad port 🤣.
I quite like what was done with the Amstrad version.
Should be mentioned that the C64 version supports the 1351 mouse.
That's good to know.
Regarding Lynx Lemmings, the low vertical resolution of the Lynx 102 pixels, was always going to cause issues and some levels had to be redesigned to accommodate this (less 'floors' etc).
What really hit me with the Lynx version, wasnt the surprisingly tinny music sounds more at home on the Game Boy Colour), but it's the effect putting icons on the pause screen has on the actual gameplay, you kill the frantic nature, making it a far more sedate experience.
Seem to remember you lost the special effects when you nuked your lemmings.
Nice scaling on the intro though.
Coders put in the message when you complete the game they'd like to consider converting Lemmings 2 to the Lynx, IF the Lynx was still around in a few years time, it wasn't 😭
Haha, nice message.
Yeah it was a pretty late release for the lynx as I recall.
@@danmoney9932 sadly by the time it arrived the fate of the Lynx was well and truly sealed, Atari blew it 😭
Thanks for all of your hard work Mark!
I appreciate that!
Damn, you took a break but came back firing in more cylinders than full. Congrats, man. Great video.
Good video. I remember first seeing this game when I was taking commercial art in collage. We had Amigas in my class and someone brought it in. Later on I got the PC version and then the Genesis version. I remember getting the Genesis version over the SNES because people said it looked closer to the Amiga version. Being hearing impaired, I never was aware of that version having messed up sounding voices until I saw this video.
For sure the Mega Drive version is closer to the Amiga. It is a shame about the voice sample issues though.
some ports you also missing such as:
Toshiba J-3100 (1991)
Macintosh (1992)
Microsoft Windows 95 (1996)
PS1 (1998), developed by Distinctive Developments and published by Psygnosis
unofficial GBA (2005), created by Zapf Bandit
PSP/PS2/PS Mobile (2007) by Team 17, the same developer behind Worms
and IOS/Android (2018) by Sad Puppy and published by Exient Games
I have both the Play Station and the Japanese SNES versions but the YIPPPEEE noise on the Play Station version every time a Lemming makes it home fries your brain pretty quickly but it has a fast forward button that the SNES version doesn't have so each version has an advantage or disadvantage. The fast forward button really is a game changer, especially in a level where that one last Lemming is still a mile away from home.
I think that's the first time I've heard someone on TH-cam mention the Sam Coupe.
Yeah, not many people know about the system.
Windows 95 port was my "first" foray, bought a fully boxed copy at our Cash Converters when I was in my early teens for a couple of quid c: Ran it on the hand-me-down Windows 95 PC I had before the monitor kinda blew up in my room...and that was the end of that :P
Oh well. At least you can say you had an original copy at some point.
@@RetroCore God knows how long ago that was- the only old PC game back from those days I still have is my copy of Earthworm Jim!
Great work on this, I’ve been looking forward to it 👌
Played a lot of Lemmings in my time starting with the ST, then Game Gear and finally Lynx.
Been looking forward to this one.
Thanks Mark ❤️
2 players gameplay w/ dual mouse is an absolute carnage on the Amiga.
8:30, the viewport was because they used sprites for the playfield and chars for the lemmings themselves.
Quite possibly one of the only games to get more ports than Doom! XD
Are we counting unofficial ports?
Always played Lemmings on DOS with a mouse. Can't imagine it any other way
Regarding the control "problems" on the C64 version, it's actually one of the few games, that support the Commodore 1351 Mouse. It's actually quite comfortable to play with mouse and keyboard.
Wish I knew that. It would have made life a little easier.
What a comparison ! Great work !
I would love to play Lemming on a Real GameBoy but not that Ocean port. By the way, there is also an official Win95 port and it was ok as far as I remember.
You know, they got a Microsoft-owned character (Banjo-Kazooie) for Smash, and Sony owns Lemmings-I think that would make a great fighter.
Played the hell out of the Acorn version at school. Fantastic game, a lot of fun with excellent music.
The Master System version is very good, technically excellent and plays well.
I think you forgot the microwave port. 😂 Excellent video. Cheers!
Haha, I bet there is one somewhere.
And the toaster port!
Love Lemmings. Played it a lot on my PC with Oh No! More Lemmings and Xmas Lemmings.
Im guess the play area got smaller on Mega Drive is propertry due memory. Lemmings was a game designed with full bitmap graphics in mind, not tiles (unlike Lemmings 2). Here you have much more ram on the Amiga than Mega Drive had. That shows clearly on some of the ports. Regardless its still a good port and good sound driver as well.
PS. Sorry for multiply posts, wanted them seperated for ports.
No worries on many posts.
btw the original Amiga game could hold a 1600x160px wide screen (5 bitmapped screens), which consumed about 128kb ram alone. Mega Drive has only 64kb video ram for the tiles. Most levels in the original did actuelly not fully used it anyway and there is a lots of black backgrounds in this game as well (due nature of the game).
So you could cut down without too much sacrifice really. Some ports might only uses 2 or 3 screens per level and this can still works well.
I know this game so popular among old PC fans but whoa this is basically like Doom puzzle counterpart, I more surprise there no challenge like Lemming run on Everything.
Or Street Fighter II.
@@pokepress pfft if you not afraid to be sue by Capcom sure, the reason why Doom run everything exist coz Doom 1 already in shareware territory and even Bethesda cannot sue anyone for porting Doom 1, and I bet even Lemmings also in Shareware territory.
6502 machines (and variants) have slow versions.
The Amiga stands out with the Hardware Sprite mouse, which registers the commands easier.
Archie has the same resolution as the Amiga/ST.
PC DOS port is unique in a way that it let you choose machine type. Adjusting the way game works. Least demanding mode has very choppy mouse and no palette switching mid-screen (software solution for amiga Copper). More demanding options give very responsive mouse cursor and display more than 16 colors on screen in 16 color VGA mode.
This is so unusual for a PC game that Lemmings has broken colors in DOSBox.
Amiga port uses copper to not only change palette but also change resolution.
Upper part of the screen is 320x240 while lower with toolbar is 640x240.
PC port is using 640x480 for menus and level preview in VGA mode, while EGA mode is using 640x350 with custom palette from 64 colors.
Level preview also has palette switch mid-screen which probably makes Lemmings the only game that display more than 16 colors at once on EGA cards.
Lemmings on PC are so bizarre that they will break many 3rd party software that is meant to run in the background.
Great game to test compatibility of any PC.
Archie also has hardware sprite, mainly used for the mouse.
@@Leeki85 'Amiga port uses copper to not only change palette but also change resolution.
Upper part of the screen is 320x240 while lower with toolbar is 640x240.'
??
No kidding, that's BS.
@@Archimedes75009 Wrong. Amiga is low res for the main game screen, and then the copper changes the screen resolution to hires for the select buttons at the bottom of the screen, anyone can check it out for themselves, no one needs to lie about it dude!
Great job mark. I remember having a lot of fun with mates with the 2 player competitive game on snes.
Thanks. Yeah, the 2 player mode can be fun and quite hectic 👍
Man, your videos are awesome!!! I still miss my Amiga 500...
Back in the 90s, every Amiga owner I knew had a pirated copy of this game. I played through every level, though not in a single sitting. I later learned that it was a PAL version that was never fixed for NTSC. The screen was fine, but the whole game ran faster than it should have, making some of the levels even harder than they would have been if I'd been playing an NTSC version!
I also played through the C64 version in an emulator just to see how well done it was. It supports a mouse (the game I mean), so that's what I used to play it. Not quite as smooth as on an Amiga, but it worked well.
There's also a PSP version with more cartoon-like graphics. It has stupid controls though. They used the D-pad for moving the cursor and the analog stick for scrolling the screen! Who the hell looks at a game that originally used a mouse, ports it to a system with analog controls and decides to use the digital controls instead?
Anyway, good job on the video. :)
If there is a way to play a good version of these games with CD audio, mouse controls and Linux compatibility, I would be all for it!
It sucks that this franchise has mostly been abandoned and hasn't even gotten rereleases for modern systems. The last iterations of Lemmings I know of, is Lemmings Touch for the PSVita and Lemmings for mobile where they changed the look of them, which seems to make them look more like their original in-game sprites and less like The Wombles.
This game would've made perfect sense on the Atari 8 bit (Especially the 130XE with the faster CPU and 128K RAM) with it's fast CPU and various graphics modes.
The commercial market for the Atari 8-bit range was long gone by the time Lemmings hit, they did receive :The Brundles... a Lemmings clone, released in 1993, which knocked-off Lemmings artwork on the cover of its manual.
@@thefurthestmanfromhome1148 that’s a good point… one I didn’t know when I wrote this comment
Impressive work, thanks you!
Playing the original A500 release of Lemmings on an A1200 (or other more powerful Ami) resulted in a much better frame rate, especially in the 2 player mode.
Awesome work,thanx a lot!!!
Lemmings!
I wouldnt be surprised if someday this would recieve a remake for modern console
Well, they tried with 3D lemmings but that was awful.
the mobile version is the closest you are going to get to that. Despite the bullshit f2p mechanics, it's not that bad.
I quite liked the GB version of Lemmings as a kid and I swear that you could speed up and slow down the lemmings. Also are you sure the slow speed is not an issue with what ever emulator you are using, I don't remember it being slow but perhaps I was just used to it.
The master system version looks pretty darn good! Shocking
Yep, it's surprising how good it is.
No mentioning on that the Amiga version is unique in that you can use two Amiga mice at once when playing the multiplayer game in Lemmings.
Because people who care about that already know. Ie: Amiga fans.
@@RetroCore It is a feature. It's like you would mention VR, 3D, or EyeToy works. You also mention in several videos about one button Joystick controls. I like your comparisons. But this is a vital reason for the Amiga version to stand out also. Yes, I am an Amiga fan but I fully agree that OutRun for Amiga is bad ;)
The Genesis/MD version has the best music out of all the 8/16 bit versions of the game. Maybe I'm biased because it was the version of the game I owned as a kid lol
Since you mentioned the Archimedes, at school we had 12 BBC Micros and 1 Archimedes in our one and only computer lesson, the creepy teacher’s pet *always* got the Archimedes and would play Virus/Zarch whilst we played `educational math games`. Still angry about it.
That's basically like my school back in the day. I think I only got to use the Arc' twice. I do remember playing E-Type racing game on it at school.
@@RetroCore Tracked down the main game we played on the BBC Micro, it was 'Yellow River Kingdom'. Was playing that whilst the guy behind me was playing Virus..
There was also an arcade version that never made it past location testing but has been dumped.
That's right.
The SNES port of Lemmings seems to use instruments ripped straight out of Super Mario All Stars.
It's probably using a basic sound font.
i had this on the amiga - fun and frustrating in almost equal measure!
I wish there was a more modern way to play Lemmings but I doubt any version will be re-released any time soon. Thanks Sony.
I had lemmings originally on master system. Got fond memories of playing this at my grans house on my game gear via the master converter. How the hell did I even see them sprites?? I later had the megadrive version and loved the music to it.
Amiga version was a little special for using a hardware feature to make the control panel a higher resolution mode than the main play area.
Archimedes version had a higher resolution than the Amiga version? Certainly not apparent by looking at it. Perhaps the Archie was underappreciated in its day, but it's probably enough that it pioneered the CPU line that dominates pretty much everything that isn't running Intel/AMD.
On the video the Arch' doesn't look higher since that capture was at native resolution then upscailed to 1080p for the video. The Amiga footage was actually captured at 1080p so it wasn't upscailed. The end result is both versions looked very much the same.
Great job man 👍🏻👍🏻
Probe Software went on record saying Sega Of America told them a conversion of Lemmings to the Game Gear, would be physically impossible 😂
Whats weird is i used to play lemmings the master system version at my grans house on the game gear via a master system converter... curious of differences
Also how the hell did I even see the sprites on such a screen!
Shows just how much Sega of America knew. All of their games sucked too IMO.
@@RetroCore 😂
@@RetroCore
If only Sega could have combined the strengths of East and West, the way Nintendo and Sony did. Has anyone else done more to defeat all the forces helping them to succeed?
Classic game, the Amiga original is always the definitive version for me. It just felt so right. PC was very good too.
ST version was very good too, thought that music is laughable.
I had a demo of the C64 version and was very impressed but looking back now, the shrunken viewing window is a tad cumbersome, though still an excellent port overall.
It's a shame we never got the Sam Coupe or Acorn Archimedes here in Australia, with the right marketing and pricing they would have taken off as formats and there could have been more choice for Lemmings fans. I never encountered any console versions back in the day, nobody I knew that had a console owned this on their console, as they would have already had the Amiga or PC version.
I have the PS3 version via PSN, gameplay wise it's fine, but no speech! What?!?
No speech on the PS3 version? That's very odd.
The Archimedes was the definitive version. I was so lucky to own this computer that was leaps ahead of the Amiga, ST and PC at the time. I always thought that Windows 95 was a total (but admitedly better) rip-off the RISC OS the Archimedes used.
Well, at least we can be proud that many modern devices use a Cpu that first saw life in the Arch.
A followup to battle of the ports lemmings is lemmings 2 but it is also coming to retro core
Lol, I'm afraid not.
Wanna know the ultimate irony?
One of the missing ports was [gasp] THE ARCADE VERSION! "oh, no!"
Lol. Yep.
For Lemmings 2 on gameboy they went with a different developer who used a lot of the same code to port it to the master system but the sms version wasn't released because the cartridge was too expensive.
Shame about the Master System version not being released.
So many ports! I know you mentioned you couldn't get them all but I was wondering how does the version included on Lemmings & Oh No! More Lemmings for the PSX compares 🤔
I'm afraid I've never played that one.
@@RetroCore There was a collection named Lemmings & Oh No! More Lemmings for the PSX that came with the original game and expansion pack on one disc. It was only released in the US and Europe.
Hahaha. Welp, like they always mentioned it in the ads. The Lemmings are everywhere. Even on all these platforms to play on Mark. 8^)
Anthony..
I was pleasantly surprised of the master system version. It seems to be the best 8bit version perhaps.
My favorite is the Amiga version. All deatils from intro to sounds are just as they should. But some ports do look really nice
Yeah, the Master System version was quite the surprise.
A mammoth task undertaken here that could only deserve a well earned congratulations and slap on the back! Many thanks Mark, I played this on Amiga and SNES and remember enjoying them both a lot, but now I think I would be cutting my ears off and pulling my eyeballs out Event Horizon style to avoid playing it. Liberate Tuteme Ex Inferis.
Lol, yeah the music is pretty dire on most versions. I've git to say I was not enjoying it. Well, besides one or two tracks on the 3DO version we're acceptable.
Played the hell out of the DOS version as a kid, but I remember it being on CD-ROM with arranged music and Sound Blaster audio, so maybe it was a later version or something... Still though, this must the record for most number of ports of the same game covered in one of your videos. ;)
Maybe that was the Windows version?
I had it on my ST and remember the Let's go sample! Or was it Lemmings 2?
That was Lemmings 2.
Great video as always! specially with so much versions of the original game. Long time a haven't visit your channel. I can blame my self, there too much stuff on youtube. Still, love you're channel!
Ah, no worries. Do remember to drop in from time to time.
Considering how many ports this game got, it's really surprising Jaguar got left out. That could've been great
I bet it was considered at some point.
@@RetroCoreGiven how poorly Lemmings sold on the Lynx, which put paid to any conversion of Lemmings 2 for the system, I very much doubt any publisher wanted to risk Lemmings on the Jaguar, given that system fated worse than the Lynx at retail.
This is a game that I never really bothered playing since I'm not really into these "guidance" types of games. But I do find it fascinating when simple games like this or Tetris end up being ported to just about everything, especially when a couple of versions end up being absolute stinkers. I mean, this is such a graphically simple game, how does the Apple ][ GS manage to screw it up so badly? I really love the twangy FM renditions of the tunes on the Mega Drive, though it may not necessarily be the best version. Probe also did a way better job porting this to the SMS/GG than they usually bother to do, and I'd go as far as saying the SMS version may be up there with the best of them. Obviously it's lacking some sound effects, but that's to be expected on a soundchip that has no dedicated sample channel.
The Master System port was very impressive I though.
The MSDOS version was my first experience with Lemmings when I was a kid. Fond memories playing with my father.
oh good this game you are comparing the ports of this video was uploaded on my birthday but 2021 is gonna be over soon so it will be 2022 next year.
I have the Game Gear version. Never played it. I want to now though. Thanks for another great episode Mark.
Any time! Glad you enjoyed the video.
That was certainly a massive undertaking, well done Mark. I like the Archimedes port a lot.
Well done on this massive undertaking Mark! Lemmings is one of my favorite games ever. Played it alot as a kid and I finally managed to complete all 100 stages now as an adult. For me the original Amiga version is the best, and Game Gear is the best portable version. It's too bad my GG died so I can't continue my playthrough of it :( . I also own a CD-I and Lemmings for it, and except for an extremely cheesy animated intro, it looks and plays really good too. It has the same arranged soundtrack as the 3DO version. The C64 wins the most unexpected good port for me as I absolutely loved it and the SID versions of the soundtrack. Truly remarkable of the devs to get it running as smooth as it does on the hardware. One stage even had all 100 Lemmings on screen at once! But that made the framerate tank to like 5 fps :D
It's a shame I couldn't show the CDi version. I have a feeling it can't be emulated. I tried 4 different rips of the game in different formats but all has the exact same error.
@@RetroCore Yeah it is a pain to emulate the CD-I. I tried it before and after a lot of hassle I got it to work somewhat in MAME if I remember correctly. The game played ok, but I couldn't get cutscenes to play properly. I unfortunately cannot remember how I set up MAME and the BIOS to get it to work as far as I did.
The reason I tried was because my machine suddenly stopped reading discs so I thought the drive was dead. Turned out it was a dead clock-battery. Apparently it makes it so the cd-drive doesn't initialize properly if the battery goes flat and it could no longer hold saves or keep track of time. It took me 4 hours to get it replaced because it was hidden inside the backup chip and it was a pain to carve it out. To my amazement though, it still worked after all that and with a new battery the machine sprung back to life again and reads discs without any problems.
Not surprising on the IIGS version, given that system stuck with a sub-2MHz CPU for Apple2 compatibility.
Bummer 😕
@@RetroCore it is, but if memory serves me right, it was supposed to have been a halfway-point upgrade from the original Apple II series to the Macintosh. Shame, given it could have come with the same speed CPU as the SuFami that came out four years later (IIGS ran at 2.8MHz). It had similar graphical capability to an Amiga 2000, and had an Ensoniq audio chip. Makes it more ironic, since certain Apple Mac LC models even had compatibility cards that were a //e on a few chips.
I played Master System version and it is awesome.
It sure is.
These little bastards got a ton of ports. Got it for NES, SNES, and Genesis, as well as Lemmings 2 The Tribes on Genesis, need to get that SNES version soon.
Used to play this a lot on my CD32
As the CD32 is a late version, It's a shame that Psygnosis didn't make the effort to include even just the audio music present in many other CD based versions. The CD32 version is basically the CDTV version. But it remains a fantastic game of course and it's nice you could play it on your CD32 🤗
Yeah, it's a typical lazy port. 100% Amiga code.
I played the HELL out of both the Amiga and DOS versions, I have later bought the CDTV copy that is your typical lazy Amiga port like 90% of all the CDTV/CD32 games; the good side is that is maybe one of the very few games for the machine that isn't stupidly expensive, try to get Xenon 2 for it..
No Mac version? That's the one I played back in the day. Though it's essentially the Amiga version but the music is mono.
Sadly not. Getting mac stuff to run is a pain in the arse so it was left out.
With this amount of ports, i never thought you really would do a botp show of it lol. Btw, i hated the NES version, the controls there were such a pain and the port was really lacking in everything else, the other 8 bit ports were far better.
Yeah, the NES version is pretty poor but that because it's another crappy Ocean game.
So many conversions for 8 bit microcomputers, yet poor Atari XL/XE was left off :(
Probably because it was a US system that never sold well in the UK. Lemmings was English after all. The C64, Amiga and ST are also American but did have a following in the UK. The Japanese machine were mostly running Japanese developed ports.
metalcoola, although there wasn't an official conversion for the Atari, there are several unlicensed versions for that machine. Cheers to Eastern Europe again. :-)