Marching off to Certain Doom without a care in the world, without the good sense to cease their Endless Trek toward Disaster, the Lemmings are in dire need of a helping hand. Yours. "LET'S GO!"
Without your help, the Lemmings will trudge off Calamitous Cliffs, wander beneath Wicked Weights with crushing results, vanish in a Blaze of Gory from fire-spewing pipes, become ensnared in the Jumping Jaws of Terrifying Traps, or simply slip into water. Wouldn't you know it: Lemmings can't swim. "OH NO!"
  However, you have the power to select any Lemming
and provide him with a skill that might save the
lives of his fellow Lemmings, sometimes at the
expense of his own. From an icon bar at the bottom
of the game screen, you select the skills of
Climbing, Floating, Blocking, Bridge Building,
Digging (three types) or Exploding. Yes, Exploding
is a skill and there is at least one level where
the well-placed self-immolation of a few Lemmings
is the only way out. "The good of the many
outweighs the good of the few. Or the one." These
guys are definitely Trekkers.
Each level (of which there are 120) begins with a set
number of Lemmings of which you must save a set
percentage, usually only 60-80 percent in the beginning
levels. However, you should practice saving all the
Lemmings whenever possible during the early rounds when
it's easier because in later rounds you will greatly
benefit from that practice. By the time you reach the
Taxing and Mayhem series of levels you'll have to save
98-100 percent of the little mammals.
 
It's also a good idea to learn the keyboard shortcut for pausing the game which happens to be "P" for Pause. Simple. There are a few levels where you'll want to have one finger on "P" and the other on the mouse so that you can quickly pause the game and select a new skill for your Lemmings. The Lemmings can literally pour out in a flood sometimes and it's actually not possible in those levels to select a skill and Lemming quickly enough. Pause the game, select a skill and then position the cursor over the Lemming to be modified before restarting.
One of the toughest procedures you'll learn is how to make an _upward_ tunnel for the Lemmmings to walk through when Lemmings can only dig _down_. (If you need help with that drop me some email.)
This game is definitely a puzzler but even young kids should be able to figure out how to save the Lemmings in the Fun levels and it's nice to know that your children are doing something constructive for once. Saving lives, instead of destroying alien critters.
Lemmings is an excellent and highly addictive game with cool tunes that can fortunately be turned off when your spouse has gone to bed. I'd suggest that you always leave the Sound Effects (SFX) on since it makes it easier to tell when you've modified a Lemming.
  If you'd like to join the Lemmings craze, there's a
demo version in the GE-MUG Library. File #24768. And
Psygnosis was also generous enough to create a special
4-level Christmas version of Lemmings. This Winter
WanderLand is file #25607.
Once you start saving the Lemmings, you can't stop.
And that's a good thing because the Lemmings don't
stop either. They just keep going and going and going
and...
Product Reviewed: Lemmings v1.4.2 by Psygnosis
Price: $35 (mail order)
Rating: 5 Lamps
System Requirements: 1-2mb RAM, System 6.0.5 or greater for color
Systems used in Review: SE/30 20mb RAM, 200mb HD
LCII 6mb RAM, 80mb HD, 13" RGB Monitor
Both with System 7.01
 
In future issues of GEnieLamp, Mac we'll review Civilization, Might and Magic III and more.
