I've got a few updates to this thread:

First of all, here are the results for the Shadow tribe, which nobody had ever completed for this challenge:

Shadow 1: 4 flame throwers are needed to blast through the "OZY" letters.  You can get the lemmings turned around in the beginning with a bunch of fillers, which is why it's not five.  In addition, you can use flame throwers to get out of the pit and get underneath the trap triggers, so fillers are not needed.  Jumpers can be avoided by using the extra skills as delays for the crowd.

Shadow 2: None. The 2-skill solution from the min-skills thread uses a twister + either basher or fencer.  The twister is easily avoided by waiting for all of the lemmings to come out and then using a digger at the far right edge of the holding area; he will go all the way down.

Shadow 3: 2 flame throwers + 1 roper. At least one flame thrower is needed on each side.  One side can be done with three flame throwers and nothing else, which allows for either a 1-roper solution or a no-filler solution for the other side.

Shadow 4: 3 bashers + 3 glue pourers. Three walls need to be bashed; I see no way to avoid that.  One glue pourer is needed to cover the bottom set of traps, one is needed to cover the gaps up top, and a third is needed to cover the top trap.  The jet pack is easily avoided by using extra skills to delay the second lemming while the first lemming covers the traps.

Shadow 5: None. The min-skills solution uses just a rock climber, a jumper, and a laser blaster.  Simon's earlier 4-skill solution from that thread uses a rock climber, two platformers, and a laser blaster.  This eliminates the jumper.  Either the rock climber or the laser blaster in Simon's 4-skill solution can be replaced with a basher, so neither of those is strictly necessary, either.

Shadow 6: 1 roper. The min-skills solution uses just 2 ropers and a superlem.  The superlem can be replaced with an attractor plus one other skill, and only one roper is needed in the intended route.

Shadow 7: 1 scooper is needed to free the crowd.  The digger can be replaced with the second scooper, the swimmer can be replaced with jumpers, and the jumper can be replaced with shimmiers.  The rock climber can be eliminated by scooping through the wall you would normally climb.

Shadow 8: None. The min-skill solution requires a basher, bazooka, 2 platformers, and something to stop the first platformer.  There also exists a left solution that uses just bashers + bazookas, so the platformers are eliminated.  Bazookas are not needed in the regular (right) route, and I came up with another solution that avoids bashers:

Shadow 8 No Basher

Make the first lemming a runner and the second an attractor.  The runner needs to bazooka twice through the pole on the right, and then he needs to drop down the shaft using a ballooner.  Once everyone has entered the level, release the crowd and make the runner fire a bazooka just before the attractor-compressed crowd splats.  The blast will keep them from splatting.  The remaining walls can be taken care of with bazookas and a fencer, and the rest of the level is obvious.

Shadow 9: 1 roper + 1 twister should be obvious.  Additional ropers can be used in place of laser blasters, and glue pourers are clearly not needed.

Shadow 10: 2 glue pourers + 2 builders. The min-skills solution uses 3 glue pourers, 3 builders, a planter, and a superlem.  The superlem is easily avoided in a variant of that solution that restrains the crowd with an attractor.  That same variant also allows the planter to be replaced with a builder.  This leaves glue pourers and builders.  I was able to get glue pourers and builders down to 2 with another solution (see spoiler):

Shadow 10: 2 Glue Pourers or 2 Builders

Make the third lemming an attractor as soon as you can.  The first lemming superlems over the first two traps, but stops before the third trap and builds over it, starting a bit to its left.  Meanwhile, the second lemming pours glue, which will come to rest against the builder's bridge and cover the first two traps.  Let the first lemming continue forward and lay one brick just before the water, then pour glue, which will cover the water and leave a small step to the right so the lemmings can drop down safely.  From there, you can use a planter + builder to reach the exit (avoiding the third glue pourer), or you can use a jumper + glue pourer + planter (avoiding the third builder).

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In addition, I've identified a few other improvements:

Polar 8: None. The 100% solution avoids the exploder (obviously).

Classic 5: 1 builder + 5 bashers + 1 miner + 1 digger.  The 100% solution avoids the blocker.

Classic 10: 1 builder. I was able to eliminate the climber using a hybrid of the min-skills solution and the regular route.:

Classic 10: No Climber

Start the same way as the min-skills solution, using a builder+blocker to crawl up the left wall.  One of the lemmings mines just before he exits, so that he goes underneath but the others still exit.  He must bash when he is exactly five pixels below the lowest floor on the left.  Meanwhile, the last lemming frees the blocker with a basher and digs down.  Use three bashers to break through the wall on the right, bash twice more to drop down lower, and then mine left.  As soon as he is low enough to bash underneath the steel without hitting it, make him a basher.  He should just barely be high enough such that he stops bashing in the tunnel you mined earlier.  From there, one carefully-placed builder gets the remaining lemmings to the exit.

It's been almost 14 years since this thread was last updated, which probably shows just how little interest there is in Lemmings 2 challenges these days, but I managed to get Shadow 5 down to 3 skills.  It's also a no-platformer solution.

Be warned that this one is extremely hairy with the finicky chain mechanics, and a decent amount of luck is needed when releasing the crowd in the end so that none of them walk to the right.

Shadow 5: Three Skills

Make a lemming a rock climber and time it so that he falls directly onto the chain, without jumping.  He needs to be released such that he is flung all the way to the right side of the level and bounces off the right wall (keeping him from climbing that wall).  From there, jump over the gap and pray that he drops off the edge just as the chain is arriving; you can assign the jumper early and climb up a bit of the side of the gap to help make the timing more favorable, but it still takes some finagling with the chain speed.  Release the lemming to the left and have him laser blast to the far left edge of the crowd's holding area.  If luck holds, no right-facing lemmings will be directly over the laser when it breaks through, and everyone will walk left to the exit.

Actually I owe the Wicked 16 solution to a recent Twitch stream by Elreydelleon.  He was doing a playthrough of the Playstation version and he was totally stumped on the level until he stumbled into that solution.  All I had to do is confirm that it works on the DOS version, as well.

It's amazing how many ideas one can get from watching someone else struggle with the levels.

Wicked 16 is possible without the bomber.  Still 5/6, though, as one of the lemmings ends up splatting, and there's no extra skills to prevent it.  This brings the level down to just 1 Builder.

Wicked 16 No Bomber

The first lemming mines from a precise location so that he breaks through above one of the chains.  Lemmings 2 and 3 float.  #4 also walks out of the miner's tunnel and ends up splatting, the one allowable loss.  #5 builds to delay him, and #6 turns off the miner's tunnel and climbs to the left.  The miner should finish just before #5 reaches him.

^ It used everything except two blockers, saving 98/100.  If it can be confirmed on the actual console, it will break the existing max-saved record for that level on the SNES.  That would be easier said than done, though, considering the insane rapid-fire sequence of pixel-precise assignments at the very end.  And to make that sequence of assignments even possible, the release of the crowd needs to be timed perfectly such that they catch up to the leader at exactly the right moment.

I'd imagine this solution could be adapted for DOS with a few slight modifications, although it won't break the record there, since 78/80 has already been confirmed in DOS via another method.

I started with the DOS version of Lemmings/ONML, around the 1994 time frame.  I was only about 8-9 years old at the time, so I initially wasn't very good at solving tough puzzles on my own, so my dad was the one who solved most of the levels at first.  After he solved them and gave me an idea of how to do them, I would then play them myself.  However, there were a few notable exceptions to this:

1: My dad struggled on Taxing 11 (The Ascending Pillar Scenario) for several days, unable to pull off the execution of the digger pit on such a small landing platform.  One day while he was at work, I managed to pull it off myself, saving him a TON of aggravation.  I then beat the next level on my own, as well.  My streak ended at two, though, because Upsidedown World was a stumper that I would have never solved on my own back in those days.

2: My dad got stumped on Mayhem 7 (Poles Apart), as he couldn't figure out how to clear 7 pillars with just 4 bashers, and there weren't enough builders to go over the top.  I tried it myself, and managed to save exactly one lemming.  My dad was shocked that I managed to even get one lemming home, until I mentioned that the one lemming I saved was the climber, and that's when the light bulb lit up in his head: Climber + Digger = Pole eliminated.

3: When we got to Mayhem 11 (We All Fall Down), my dad didn't even attempt it.  He said that one was mine -- I was always better at quick reflexes and pixel-precise execution than he was!

I think Simon and kieranmiller nailed most of the flaws with Lemmings 3.  The buggy and often counterintuitive mechanics, poor level design, and ability to micromanage each lemming with unlimited blockers, walkers, and jumpers definitely drop the game below the quality of its predecessors.

Nevertheless, I really liked Lemmings 3, or at least I really liked what it tried to be.  The music and graphics were top-notch for the time, and the tool pickups were a novel idea that had a lot of potential.  Classic 26 is one level that did an excellent job of demonstrating some of that potential.  It required you to dig a hole to reach a bunch of bricks down below, then build out of the hole you just dug and build a splatform for the crowd, and finally dig back down through the bricks to reach the exit.  If you didn't manage the tools carefully, you could end up with all of the spades down at the bottom of the hole when you built back up, leaving no way to get back down the second time.  Unfortunately, good levels like Classic 26 were the exception rather than the rule.

One other flaw I should mention is the sheer amount of struggles I went through back in the day to get Lemmings 3 to run properly.  Today with DOSBox, it's trivial by comparison, but back then, it took a ton of troubleshooting to keep the game from freezing on my Windows 3.1 machine, and trying to get the game to run at all on a Windows 95 machine was a fool's errand.

Ultimately, despite the flaws, I consider the game to be a noble attempt at a novel idea.  I would have liked to see a spin-off title that takes the same idea and executes it flawlessly with improved mechanics and better puzzles, but as it stands, the flaws in Lemmings 3 drop it from what could have been a phenomenal game to merely a good game.

I've still got the manuals for most of the Lemmings games.  The Lemmings and ONML manuals both say, "Paintings by Adrian Powell", and the L3 (Chronicles/ANWOL) manual clearly states, "Cover Illustration by Dave Pether."  Unfortunately, I don't see anything like that in the L2 manual (see attached image).  I also ran through the credits in the L2 endgame sequence, but again I didn't see anything like "Box Art" or "Cover Art" listed.

Quote from: mobius on December 14, 2022, 01:46:53 AM
Agree; the hardest part of that level [my friend the end] is in the opening area, and secondary area directly to the east of that with the switch beneath the door which is not trivial to navigate either. The other part of the level is a switch guessing game, with an out of reach switch that only hinders you... And one switch that doesn't work; it doesn't even animate for some reason.

Wow, I completely forgot about the out of reach switch when I reviewed that level.  Since the solution doesn't use it and it's out of the way, I've always treated it as if it wasn't there.

I'm wondering if the designers meant to have that switch facing the other direction.  As an experiment, I had the trailblazer build up there and walk the length of the corridor back and forth, hitting the switch twice.  After doing that, there was just enough time left to complete the level normally.  It would certainly make the level a lot more challenging if the switch started out reversed, such that by walking back and forth in that corridor you would only hit the switch once, opening the path to the teleporter.

I am not aware of any way around the timing element on Turn on! Tune in! Switch on!  The key is to compress the crowd as much as possible behind a blocker.  Even then, the timing is annoyingly precise.  Fortunately, there is a good indicator of when to bomb the blocker holding the crowd: It's almost at the exact same moment that the scout hits the ceiling after getting flipped upside down by the anti-gravity pad.

Outside of that timing annoyance, I agree that it is one of the best puzzles in the game, which uses the anti-gravity pads to their full potential.

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12-10: My friend the end.
Lemmings: 50
Save: 49
Release Rate: 1
Time: 3:30
Skills: 3 climbers, 10 floaters, 3 bombers, 2 blockers, 10 builders, 2 bashers, 1 miner, 2 diggers

Good: The first time I played through the game, this was the first level in the final column that I encountered, and it did not disappoint!  Right off the bat, the crowd starts in a perilous situation, with a splat fall from the entrance into a empty water tank that will be soon be filled by the singleton lemming.  It was a very intimidating introduction to the final column for me, and it requires quick action right at the beginning to get everyone to safety.

Bad: Once you've got the crowd safely in the holding area, the rest of the level becomes a simple trailblazer exercise.  The singleton lemming essentially has no purpose other than hitting switches.

12-5: No clues ... hee hee hee hee!
Lemmings: 50
Save: 40
Release Rate: 30
Time: 10 minutes
Skills: 2 climbers, 10 bombers, 10 blockers, 20 builders, 2 bashers, 10 miners, 10 diggers

Good: I love the trick to this level.  It seems impossible at first glance, as there is no way (without glitches) to get a lemming safely down to the laser gate that opens the path to the exit.  It turns out that those pesky weasels guarding the area before the exit are the key to completing the level.  Once you figure that out, creating a safe path for the weasels is far from trivial, especially if you're trying for 100%.

Bad: Creating the path for the weasels can easily become a builder-fest, reminiscent of some of the builder-heavy levels in the original Lemmings.  Also, it's possible to get a lemming down the laser gate by making a lemming a bomber so that he Oh-no's right before he splats, and then making him build before he explodes.  That defeats the concept of using the weasels, but one can argue that it's a flaw in the game mechanics rather than the level itself.

Regarding Two Laps Finale, I'm still not sure what the intended solution to that level is.  When I first solved the level, I built a splatform for the crowd, entered the teleporter, and built directly to the exit from the right side, avoiding the switch so that the retractable wall stays closed and turns the crowd to the left.  That seems like a backroute, since the little arrow at the top of the level suggests you should approach the exit from the left side, but all of my attempts to find a solution that actually uses the whole level end up running out of builders.

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11-13: The Diving Board
Lemmings: 100 (50 regular lemmings and 50 water lemmings)
Save: 98
Release Rate: 99 (regular lemmings), 40 (water lemmings)
Time: 5 minutes
Skills: 1 climber, 1 bomber, 2 blockers, 4 builders, 1 basher

Good: The level lives up to its name, since the water lemmings have to drop off a long wooden plank into a water tank.  You can't let the regular lemmings just walk to the exit, since one of them has to build up to the switch to fill the water tank.  The level also makes good use of the cylindrical level format; both the water lemmings and the "hero" regular lemming end up making one complete revolution around the level.

Bad: It's way too easy for its position in the game.  It's also annoying that you have to block right next to a retractable wall, which ends up being closed later on.  That defeats the purpose of having the retractable wall there in the first place.

11-10: Lemming be thy name...
Lemmings: 60 (2 entrances)
Save: 51
Release Rate: 30/99
Time: 5:00
Skills: 2 climbers, 2 floaters, 9 bombers, 6 blockers, 1 builder, 2 miners

Good: The level looks daunting at first, with several obstacles to traverse and a limited skill supply.  It appears that blockers and/or bombers will be needed in several places, requiring careful management of the ten worker lemmings.

Bad: Once you realize that you only need to save one of the ten worker lemmings, the solution becomes almost trivial.  You can send two athletes to do all of the work without worrying about creating a suitable route for the others.

^ I'm glad you mentioned the intended solution to "Don't Let Them Out!"  I love the overall idea, but the execution is absolutely insane.  I spent several hours getting it to work, and most of that time was spent optimizing the solution to get it within the time limit.  When a 5-minute time limit ends up coming down to the last few seconds, it's probably too tight.

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11-8: Speedy Gonzalez
Lemmings: 53 (3 entrances)
Save: 52
Release Rate: 99/1/99
Time: 4:00
Skills: 1 floater, 1 bomber, 2 blockers, 3 builders, 1 miner

Good: You have to strategically place a blocker on the retractable floor so that he can be released and saved later.  I also like the way the splatform for the crowd doubles as a means to reach the critical switch to drain the water tank.

Bad: Although the theme has been used on prior levels, I think the level would be more interesting if "Speedy Gonzalez" had to race to catch the crowd before they fell.  Instead, you're given a blocker/bomber to delay the crowd as long as necessary.  I'll also mention that an unnecessary amount of precision is required for several skill assignments, most notably the final miner.

Lemmings Revolution Level 9-2 (Can't Get There from Here) 100% is now confirmed (the previous record was 49/50).

Sadly, I can't take the credit for this one.  I found the solution on the Lemmings Fandom wiki.  It exploits a glitch that I was previously unaware of:

The Glitch

You can make a lemming pass through a thin steel wall by attempting to bash through it multiple times in rapid succession.