Lemmings are odoriferous arctic rodents notorious for periodic mass suicide. You’d think that would rule out computer-game stardom. But no—Psygnosis craftily transformed the mean-tempered ice-rats into lovable Pillsbury Doughboys with green hair and 78-rpm voices. These little guys are so darn cute you just can’t help wanting to save them from self-destruction. That’s where your problems begin.
Lemmings looks like an arcade game, but it’s more a series of puzzles: Save a specified number of the cuddly creatures within a given time limit, or else repeat the level. You manage the action by bestowing various skills on individual lemmings, enabling them to construct bridges and tunnels that divert their less-gifted buddies to safety.
Icons across the bottom of the screen represent the skills at your disposal: climbing, parachuting, traffic control, bridge building, demolition, and three kinds of digging. Select a skill, then click on the desired rodent, and that lemming will do as you command. The others, however, will cheerfully plunge to their doom at every opportunity. When so many of the contrary little vermin have reached room temperature that you can no longer succeed, you have to reset with the apocalyptic Nuke ‘Em option and try again.
Lemmings graphics and sound are polished, but unambitious. What it lacks in flash, however, it makes up for in comfort: Smooth and addictive, it includes a fast restart option, instant access to any level you’ve already seen, and a nifty two-player mode with 20 levels of its own. The program detects and uses extra memory. It recognizes an external drive and minimizes disk-swapping on single-drive systems. The only rough edge is the DOS-based copy protection.
To make sure you experience plenty of stress and frustration, Lemmings increasingly restricts your use of the most helpful skills. The screens get so tough that you think there must be design flaws. Goofy music drones on relentlessly, subtly lowering your intelligence. By level 50, you’re considering suicide yourself…and level 51.