Sixteen years ago, I saw a release-date listing in Computer & Video Games magazine for "Lemmings Platform Game". Fourteen years ago, a relative found a copy of that game - Lomax - to buy. A year later, they traded it for something else. Two years ago, I finally found a copy of my own. And, a few hours ago, after having made a bunch of non-serious attempts at completing it several times before over the years, I finally completed Lomax for the first time. Some thoughts and observations follow;
Firstly, did anyone notice that the title theme from Lomax, is a loose rearrangement of track 22 from the MS-DOS CD-ROM for Lemmings 3D? It may also be the same track in the PSX version, but I don't have that (yet), so I couldn't say for sure (EDIT Oct-16th-2012: It's not. In the PSX version, it's track 5). The same theme is loosely remixed further, or otherwise expanded upon, in the first three tracks from the medieval area, too. (It took me far too long to consciously notice this, especially considering that the track from Lemmings 3D that the Lomax title theme is based upon is one of my favourites from that game.)
Secondly, as I briefly mentioned
in another thread, the removal of the animation frames where Evil Ed is smoking a cigarette (which, by my understanding, actually are used in the version for Microsoft Windows 95) was not quite as thorough as it could have been. If you look at Ed when he has his arms folded on the map screen, you can see him still holding his cigarette, though he never actually smokes it. That said, chances are that this got through the usual checks because, on the intended type of display from the time of the game's release, it doesn't show too much, and can easily be dismissed as a magic wand or something of that nature (especially considering that part of the point of the game is breaking the spells cast by Ed). Still, it *is* there.
Last of all, am I the only one who didn't really feel that the game was "unfinished"? (I *was* a little disappointed that it was over so soon, but that's a different thing.) The game is no more or less unfinished than a lot of platformers for the Commodore 64 or Amiga, which happen to be the systems where the team responsible got their start. More tellingly, The Misadventures of Flink (the game that Lomax is often considered to be a spiritual sequel to) has an endgame that is quite similar to that of Lomax, with a not-especially-dire final boss (which happens to be defeated in a fairly similar fashion, at that), an equally insubstantial ending, and a relatively short credits sequence that's overlaid over demonstrations of in-game activity. I've seen fan-written speculation in a couple of places, claiming that the game is incomplete and was rushed towards the end of production (and, in some cases, imagining game content that isn't there on the basis of the box-art, which typically tends to be created by people not even involved with a game's production) - notably, in an older post that I saw here during my lurking time, and also on someone's personal website (which, unusually, I seem to remember, also speculated about record players being region-locked, in relation to that awesome Lemmings single by SFX
) - but I have not seen any such claims from those who were actually responsible for the game. Is there really anything on record from an authoritative source about the game being incomplete, or is that whole notion something actually born of speculation from a generation who aren't aware of the games that went before, and of the influences on (and previous games behind) Lomax? I would really love to know about this, either way.
Anyhow, those rambles aside, I'd have to say that I had great fun with the game, and I'm only sad that it was so short! It got a bit brutal towards the end (though, thankfully, was very rarely unfair with it, although it would have been nice if the workings of those thermal updrafts in Ed's Domain were a bit easier to deal with), but that only served to remind me of how much I don't enjoy a lot of modern titles in the genre due to their lack of challenge. It's a real shame that the follow-up to this game (which, I would guess, would probably have been related to Lomax in the same way that Lomax is related to The Misadventures of Flink - i.e., a spiritual sequel, rather than a direct one) didn't get to make it out of concept form. Maybe one day there'll be another game like this - I can but hope.
