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How to play Lemmings (1991) on a modern PC

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namida:
See also:
How to play and create custom levels
List of Lemmings engines (2013)

Running original Lemmings from 1991 on a modern PC isn't as simple as grabbing a copy of the game and double-clicking the EXE file. It was for DOS and Amiga, but modern Windows has no support for these. Even Lemmings for Windows 95 won't run without problems.

Common ways to play on a modern system:


NeoLemmix

As of 2022, NeoLemmix is the most popular engine. It's for Windows, but runs well in Wine on Linux, too.

To play Lemmings 1 and ONML in NeoLemmix:

* Download the NeoLemmix installer.
* Download the 'Lemmings' levelpack for NeoLemmix.Physics are different from DOS Lemmings 1. Many glitches are fixed. Some non-glitch physics are changed: Builders cancel when their bellies hit terrain, steel stays intact even when ground removers move halfway inside, ground removers have different cancelling conditions, etc.

NeoLemmix offers excellent quality-of-life features: Rewinding to fix mistakes, replays, savestates, directional select, assign during pause, ... They're all optional. You can play without them.


DOS Emulation

For the most authentic Lemmings experience, DOSBox is your best option. DOSBox is a free and open-source DOS emulator for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and several other platforms.

* Download DOSBox from its website.

* You need an actual copy of DOS Lemmings 1.

* ... see one of Simon's posts below, or search the forums, search the net ... (to edit here)

* For Lemmings 1, set DOSBox CPU cycles to 7,000 or fewer (Ctrl+F11 or sometimes Ctrl+Shift+F11?), otherwise music will not load.

* Run Lemmings 1 within DOSBox.

* When you're in Lemmings 1's main menu, you can increase CPU cycles to around 10,000 or 20,000. L2, L3, or 3D Lemmings behave best at higher cycle counts, experiment with 20,000 to 40,000 or max speed in the config.
See our threads in the Help section on how to run Lemmings 2 or Lemmings 3 in DOSBox.

Downsides: You'll have no player-assist features, and you need passwords.

For more recent development, try Dosbox-Staging and see its wiki entry about Lemmings 1.


Lemmix

Lemmix is a fan-made clone originally developed by EricLang, with later improvements by ccexplore and myself. There is a "Lemmix player" for each official game based on the original mechanics, as well as one containing extra official levels from various sources. This means Lemmix is an option for Original Lemmings, Oh No! More Lemmings, Xmas Lemmings 91/92, Holiday Lemmings 94 (this includes 93), Covox Lemmings Demo, Prima Publishing Lemmings Demo, as well as virtually every official level from other (non-DOS) platform versions of these which share the same or very similar mechanics (and even some that don't, such as Sega Master System).

* Download one of the Lemmix Players from the NeoLemmix website.

* Familiarize yourself with the hotkeys. (to edit, link to the topic)
Lemmix emulates the original games' mechanics perfectly. For convenience, it offers savestates, fast-forward, forward framestepping, and saving solution replays -- although with unremappable, obscure hotkeys that you must locate by experiment.


SuperLemminiToo

A series of Lemmings engines developed in Java. The Lemmini series marries Amiga gameplay physics with the lush graphics included in Windows 95 Lemmings, complete with an upgraded UI. It runs on practically any operating system that Java supports.

* Choose and download either SuperLemminiToo, SuperLemmini, or Lemmini.

* For SuperLemmini or Lemmini, you need a copy of Lemmings for Windows 95. (SuperLemminiToo ships all resources already with itself.)

* Download DMA Lemmings & Oh No! More Lemmings (Remastered).
Differences between SuperLemminiToo, SuperLemmini, and Lemmini (click to show/hide):lemming: Download SuperLemminiToo: Charles's a fork of SuperLemmini. It's the latest entry in the series.

* Re-implements Timed Bombers as a user option: You can choose to play with instant or with timed bombers.

* Fixes several bugs from SuperLemmini.

* Includes a number of upgrades to the UI over SuperLemmini

* Includes the WinLemm resources. You don't have to extract those yourself from WinLemm.
:lemming: Download SuperLemmini: Tsyu's fork of Lemmini.

* Fixes a number of bugs from Lemmini.

* Offers a larger catalog of levels than Lemmini.

* Improves the UI of Lemmini.

* Bombers explode instantly. They don't have a countdown timer.
:lemming: Download Lemmini from the original Lemmini website. This is the original platform in this series, developed by Volker Oth. It's no longer actively maintained.

Our SuperLemmini board offers for fanmade level packs, level editors, discussion, records tables and more.

You'll get high-resolution graphics and high-resolution gameplay. Physics details will be different from DOS Lemmings.

There are basic player-assist features: fast forward, replays, direction select, forward frame-stepping. None of the Lemmini games support rewinding. When you make a mistake, restart the level, let it replay your correct actions, then interrupt the replay before your mistakes.


SNES Emulation

You can even get mouse support, unlike on a real SNES:

* Get gocha's snes9x-rr or maybe another SNES emulator with Lua support.

* Load a Lemmings or Lemmings 2 ROM in snes9x-rr.

* Download the appropriate script: Lua script for Lemmings, or Lua script for Lemmings 2.

* Load the script in snes9x-rr.

* Hide the script window. You can move it to the edge, or move it to a second monitor.

* Enter fullscreen.
Keys:

* Right mouse button = Start/Pause.

* Left mouse button = main button.

* Tab = Fast forward.
Info comes from crazygerry's post below. Thanks!

Simon:
I estimate that some people want to stay close to DOS physics. In case DOS physics is what we want, and ease-of-use is less important, this is the ranking:

1. Dosbox + Lemmings: Has DOS physics by definition.

2. Lemmix: Physics are identical to DOS L1 in newer Lemmix versions: Some abstruse glitches are fixed Any differences to DOS L1 are considered bugs, even if the behavior in DOS L1 is strange in many places. Offers many hotkeys (documented where? Because invisible inside the game) to easen play, like savestates, framestepping, and replays. Does not offer extra functionality that could generate input impossible in DOS L1, thus no directional select.

3. Neolemmix: Forked off Lemmix, has the various hotkeys (but this time visible: buttons on screen and config menu), but has different physics. Steel behaves cleaner than in DOS L1. Builder stops on hitting terrain inside belly, ground removers have different ending conditions, etc. Has directional select, because it doesn't try to replicate DOS physics anymore.

4. Lix, or Superlemmini. Engines not based on anything DOS related. Don't have the DOS physics glitches. Vanilla Lemmini comes with its own physics glitches instead.

-- Simon

namida:

--- Quote ---Some abstruse glitches are fixed (percent saved affected by nuke, pause for time before hatch opens).
--- End quote ---

The lack of these has been fixed (or unfixed, depending on what angle you want to look at it from) in the more recent updates.

ccexplore:
It is probably obvious, but worth mentioning for the "console/handheld emulator" option, keep in mind that with the exception of basically Amiga, most other options under that category means you won't have the ability to play the game with a mouse.  It may not necessarily be a deal-breaker but it's certainly one more thing that will deviate your experience from the "real thing".

Also, I never had to set DOSBox CPU cycle for L1-based games.  It seems to work well for me even when left at the admittedly lower-than-reality default of 3500 or so.  In fact, bumping it up too high may cause you to lose sound (or perhaps they may have fixed that in later DOSBox versions, it's been a while since I touched DOSBox), though 7000 I think is still low enough to keep that from happening.

LemEdit is the one program that I distinctly remember having to bump up the CPU cycle a lot (like 20000+ IIRC) to be usable.

I want to say even for DOS L2 you could get away not bumping up the CPU cycle in DOSBox, although I think it may have been slightly better to use a higher one than default for that game.  L3 I think you really do have to.  Or maybe not, it's been a while since I last tried those too. :-\  Anyway, it doesn't hurt to try I guess, if the default settings aren't working out.

More important may be where you get those games from.  In some cases the original versions may actually not work properly on modern machines even with DOSBox.  They may not crash outright, but you may experience weird things like load/save not working on L2, or other weirdness when you get to certain parts of/places in the game.  abandonia.com can be your friend to find slightly cracked versions of the games that work much better in DOSBox.

lemfan101:
Which solution would you recommend to a noob who'd like to play all sorts of lemming games?

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