I just stumbled across this last night, and, although the release has not yet happened, I think that it's well worth sharing here.
Basically, the Archimedes Software Preservation Project* - which, as you might guess, is dedicated to preserving software originally made for the Acorn Archimedes computers, as well as Acorn's RISC PC - has signed a deal with (amongst others) the rights-holders of the software that was reprogrammed for the Archimedes by Krisalis Software. This includes the Archimedes versions of Lemmings, Oh No! More Lemmings, and Lemmings 2: The Tribes, meaning that they will soon be available as legal downloads, which, to the best of my knowledge, would make these the first Lemmings titles to be granted such distribution rights.
*(More info on that
here. It's also noteworthy that it's backed by the Centre for Computing History, which is a British computing museum.)
Their official announcement of this,
from October 27th 2012, is quoted below;
ANNOUNCEMENT:
R-Comp Interactive and the Archimedes Software Preservation Project (JASPP) sign a landmark agreement at the London RISC OS show, granting distribution rights to JASPP for previous commercial titles published by Krisalis and Gremlin Graphics.
Both parties have agreed to collaborate going forward, on the preservation and updating of titles to run on modern machines. Previously unreleased titles will also be looked at and where feasible, revived to continue development.
Titles covered by this agreement will be available through JASPP as soon as possible, and include:
Alone In the Dark
Battle Chess
Cannon Fodder
Champions
Chuck Rock
Fire & Ice
Gods
Heimdall
Hero Quest
Jahangir Khan World Championship Squash
James Pond
Krisalis Collection, The
Lemmings
Lemmings 2: The Tribes
Lotus Turbo Challenge 2
Mad Professor Mariarti
Magic Pockets
Manchester United
Manchester United Europe
Nebulus
Oh, No! More Lemmings
Omar Sharif's Bridge
Pac-mania
Populous
Premier Manager
Quest For Gold
Revelation
S.W.I.V.
Sensible Soccer
Sim City
SimCity 2000
Speedball 2
World Championship Boxing Manager
World Class Leaderboard
Zool - Ninja of the 'Nth' Dimension
Commenting on the agreement, RCI's Andrew Rawnsley said - "We're very happy to be working with JASPP on these games, as they clearly have a huge love for the titles, as well as the technical skills needed to do them justice. We look forward to these titles giving RISC OS gamers many more hours of pleasure in the years to come."
Speaking on behalf of JASPP, Jon Abbott remarked - "The titles covered by this agreement are some of the most notable games from the Archimedes era, and JASPP are thankful to RCI for making this agreement possible. The Archimedes Software Preservation Project's aim is to make many more commercial titles available for free, and hope to arrange similar agreements with other rights holders in the future."
A later posting,
from last week, states (amongst other things) the following;
Quite a lot of imaging and scanning since the last update, over 10% of known titles are now complete, with PDF manuals, box scans, floppy images etc. A further 38 are in progress for completion, so we should have around 100 complete in Jan/Feb.
And...
Thanks also go to the web developers that have come forward and offered their time to get the website designed, I appreciate your efforts. I'm looking forward to getting the authorised titles available to the world early next year...no pressure!
For those with an interest in ex-commercial games being made legally available like this, as well as those with an interest in ARM-based hardware and its history, this is pretty exciting news, not to mention another option for those looking to get into Lemmings (or just add to their Lemmings game collection
).
It's also a boon to new ARM hardware that can run RISC OS (as the Archimedes did) - such as, for example, the $35/~£30
Raspberry Pi single-board computer - as it gives a boost to what new users have available to them (though some games will also require
this guide due to changes in the ARM architecture since the Archimedes' day).
