Edit 2024-04-10: It's released; download here:
DOS Game Club's Lemmings 1 podcast episodeRuns for 2 hours and 9 minutes, as MP3, 148 MB.
Hi,
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DOS Game Club is an online community. Each month, they pick a DOS game to play. Afterwards, they record a podcast (~1 hour) about it, and publish it on their website.
The next podcast will be about DOS Lemmings 1, and I'm invited as an expert. Most likely, we'll record the podcast next week. Let's make sure that I don't forget important topics. Thus:
What's important about DOS Lemmings 1?
- L1 was the big hit for DMA.
- I should know the Lemmings History essay.
- DOS L1 was one of the main ports, with SNES L1 and Atari L1. The original L1 was on Amiga 500.
- Lemmings 1 in particular serves as the inspiration for most other Lemmings-trademarked games and fan-games.
- Pure singleplayer (no multiplayer) on DOS.
- Passwords, unlimited retries, no lives. Still, if you got stuck, you were stuck on a single level.
- Execution and puzzles went hand-in-hand. E.g., it had All or Nothing, which becomes trivial in modern engines, and even in DOS L1 when you know the cursor-flickering trick.
- Even the L1 editor manual (on Mike Dailly's site, LF forum topic) tells you: You can hide your exits.
- The quirky soundtrack and the unused Music from TV show themes.
- Physics oddities. It's possible to solve They just keep on coming with 0 builders by disabling steel with blocker trigger areas.
What levels from DOS L1 were iconic?
- No Added Colours or Lemmings
- It's Hero Time
- Cascade, with 100 % saved
- Hunt the Nessy, the quintessential builderfest
- The Great Lemming Caper
- Postcard from Lemmingland
- Save me, it's the hardest level
- The VGASpec levels: Beast, Menacing, Awesome
What's important about contemporary Lemmings culture?
- Custom level design!
- It's common to release ~100 levels as a standalone pack, like Lemmings itself did.
- We send each other our replays to improve the puzzles.
- Some levels are about one specific idea. Other levels are open-ended but can still be difficult.
- Engine design, tileset design. You can get involved in other ways than level making or solving.
- NeoLemmix is most popular.
- Lix has single- and multiplayer.
- 100 % focus on puzzles (ideally, 0 % execution) in NL and singleplayer Lix.
- Lots of tooling: Rewind, replay tweaking, insert mode, ...
- Still, ideally, your level should never need the powerful tools. Be lenient where you can.
- We tell newbies: Don't hide traps! Don't hide anything!
- SuperLemmix, because it points to other elements of singleplayer than pure puzzle solving.
- Vanilla Lemmix? Lemmini? Cheapo? CustLemm? Patrick, one other participant in this podcast, has built a 10-level pack for CustLemm -- and, for sure, included a level with hidden exits, because that's fair game in 90's-style Lemmings 1.
- Community work to find min-skill DOS L1 solutions, DOS L1 challenge solutions, ...
- Martin Zurlinden's pack is an early quality custom pack of 30 levels, inspiring others.
Even if I'm not 100 % knowledgeable about something, it's fine: The club regulars are good researchers and acheologists. E.g., for their
Jazz 1 podcast, they dug through the developers' past, had quirks to tell, and even found my
table about Jazz 1 versions and the 2021 GOG patch.
-- Simon