When is an intro not an intro?

[Prob Lem]

When it's the ending theme rearranged, of course.

It's probably well-known that, in the Mega Drive version of Lemmings 2: The Tribes, the ending theme was rejigged slightly and used for the intro sequence instead. There's a video of it here, if you're not familiar with this. (The audio sounds nice here, but there's nothing quite like hearing it from a real Mega Drive or Mega Drive II, as Matt Furniss was and most likely still is a master of getting incredibly good sounds out of this sort of hardware.)

This was actually the first version of Lemmings 2 that I ever played, and I was quite surprised a couple of years ago (not too long before I joined Lemmings Forums, actually) when I found that the intro was completely different in all of the others. It's similar between all of those, sure, but I don't think there's any other version that has an intro quite like the Mega Drive one - they all seem to follow after the Amiga original in their structure. Even the Acorn Archimedes version, which is closely related to the Mega Drive one due to being ported by the same company, follows the standard set by the Amiga intro (though it does spin it off into a separate program).

I love the way this tune was used here - I think it fits really well, and it's certainly in tune with the presentation of other games on the same machine (so much so that I wonder if the publishing guidelines for the Mega Drive recommended it, in fact). I still can't quite accept it as an ending theme, because of this.

I was just wondering if anyone else was a fan of this version-specific change?

[ccexplore]

Actually the SNES version also opted for background music (not the same as Megadrive's choice though, I think?)  instead of the sound-effects-only intro you hear in Amiga (and apparently Acorn).  But you are correct that Amiga, Atari? (not sure actually since I can't find intro featured for it on Youtube yet) and PC versions all feature a sound-effects-only intro, but I guess that's to be expected since they are all developed at basically the same time similar to how DMA did Lemmings 1.  Other than sound, I believe all other aspects of the intro are basically the same across all versions.

It kinda makes sense though that they decided to do things differently on Megadrive, since a few other music in that port (as well as SNES, perhaps to a lesser extent) have also been altered or rearranged.  Here's a comparison on Youtube of the music of the 12 tribes across Amiga, Atari, Megadrive, PC and SNES, with notable similarities amongst Amiga/Atari/PC (annoyingly, it neglects to compare the intro sequences, oh well):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJyageIUYoU (part 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J62J85DeA9w (part 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv-N2OzBDC4 (part 3)

To be honest I think the sound effects used in the Amiga/PC versions' intro aren't that great, a few of them seems to end a bit too abruptly and overall they just feel a little disjointed at times to me.  I like the concept but I think the execution could be improved.  I think the background music intro opted for by SNES and especially Megadrive work a lot better to my ears.

[Prob Lem]

Funnily enough, I left out the SNES version since it uses several different themes (and I'm fairly sure that that sort of presentation would have been in Nintendo's guidelines), but you're right, it is noteworthy as being in the same vein as the Mega Drive one. I agree on the disjointedness of the effects-only intros, incidentally - I much prefer the musical approach, too.

Speaking of the altered music, it's worth taking a listen to the Acorn Archimedes version of Lemmings 2 if you want to hear several of the same arrangements used in the Mega Drive version rendered in a tracker format, rather than a chiptune one. This video features them all, and has a track listing in the description with clickable timestamps.

Another interesting note about the intros, by the way: Although the text is similar in most of them, the way it's presented, and often the precise wording as well, is usually not exactly the same (I'd need to look again, but I'm fairly sure that no two versions are identical in this regard - barring the unreleased Master System and Game Gear ports, which come from the same source, of course). I really like the way it's paced in the Mega Drive version, as it gives something of an impression of the way things are being spoken (if that makes any sense at all), which isn't quite the same as in any of the others.