Lemmings 30th Anniversary Documentary to be made by Exient

[WillLem]

So, it turns out that Sony no longer owns the rights to Lemmings. They are now owned by Exient, who are the publishers of the Sad Puppy mobile title.

Exient are making a documentary about the history of the game, might be worth a watch!

Here's an article about the upcoming documentary.

[NieSch]

Cool! Something to look forward to.

It's also fun to read the comments below the article. So many people who still love the game and talk about it with feelings of nostalgia.

[Simon]

Are there sources besides this article that Exient really bought the monopolies (copyrights, trademarks) from Sony, not merely a license?

Reason: Author in that article writes "current license holder Exient (who acquired the property from Sony)". This doesn't make any sense to me. If you hold the intellectual monopolies yourself, you don't need a licence. I'd wager that he really means that Exient got the license from Sony, not the monopolies.

-- Simon

[WillLem]

Are there sources besides this article that Exient really bought the monopolies (copyrights, trademarks) from Sony, not merely a license?

I'm not sure. I originally discovered this article via a Wiki page, but I can't remember which Wiki page it was

[NieSch]

The premiere of this documentary is on Thursday, December 2nd 2021 in Dundee and will be followed by a Q&A with some of the key designers and developers.

Lemmings: Can You Dig It? will be made available for general release via streaming platforms in December.

Info from this article: https://scottishgames.net/2021/11/19/world-premiere-of-lemmings-can-you-dig-it-documentary-in-dundee/

[NieSch]

Nice article from the Sunday Post today following the documentary:

https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/lemmings-the-legacy/

[WillLem]

Does anyone know when/where this will be aired?

[NieSch]

All I can find is late 2021 on streaming services. So hopefully we will be able to see it soon for a small fee.

[NieSch]

Impulse Gamer made a nice review of the documentary: https://www.impulsegamer.com/lemmings-can-you-dig-it-review/

It ends with:

"As a love letter to the original game it's appropriate that the documentary will be available to view via streaming platforms from the 14th of February."

[NieSch]

Monday February 14th the documentary will be released on the Exient YT-channel!

Article: https://www.thenational.scot/news/19919517.lemmings-watch-documentary-classic-scottish-game-free/

Link to the YT-video:
https://youtu.be/RbAVNKdk9gA

[607]

Interesting!
I'm going to check it out, although I won't be able to watch it live.

[mantha16]

I watched it , was interesting i kinda told them the mobile game was garbage lol

[NieSch]

I liked it too! It's nice to see everyone involved still talking fondly about the game and their experiences developing it.

The mobile game, I wouldn't compare it with the original gameplay wise but I think they did a very good job making the Lemmings simple and cute like the original sprites and at the same time up to date.

[Simon]

Super-fast playtesting immediately from the editor, yes, lovely UI feature. Every millisecond between editor and game counts here. Nobody today has that as good and as fast as the L1 devs had it. NL comes closest.

Two-player lemmings would be a great game nowadays? It certainly is.

-- Simon

[mantha16]

i will give the mobile game credit for the sprites cos they are cute.

I would adore 2 player neolemmix but I know thats not gonna happen and i can't get to grips with lix so I shall just make do with playing alone lol

[The Tomato Watcher]

That section about 2-player mode reminded me about the rumors of the possibility of a multiplayer mobile Lemmings game in the mid-2000s I found during my research of the old mobile games. I wonder if that would have slowly brought back multiplayer Lemmings to the newer games, had it actually been made. Probably not, but one can dream.

If Sony (or whatever mobile licensee they have at the time) made a Lemmings game with a multiplayer mode nowadays, it could be online, with a friends system and random matches and possibly a level editor and all that stuff, but that'll probably never happen. The thought of it is certainly exciting though.

[Ste Woz Ere]

Two-player lemmings would be a great game nowadays? It certainly is.

It was back then...however they talked about balancing the 2P levels by drawing them out, yet I distinctly remember the green player having a big advantage in nearly all of them. (only the asymmetrical level 12 favours blue iirc)

[Minim]

Posting on here (for the first time in 2022) to say that I watched the whole documentary yesterday and was thrilled! Some parts were very satisfying to watch on a big TV screen.

It's a shame that Scott Johnston wasn't in but the rest of the level designers turned up and delivered their thoughts. My favourite parts were Adrian's lemmings cover art, and Gary's Lemming drawings/animation. The sleepy eye expression is so fitting for this game! I also loved watching the lemmings blow up, especially on the big screen and all these seemingly random coloured pixels bursting out like fireworks; but never got the connection that it's actually giving the players and emotional response to the game (If I worded that correctly).

Kudos to Tim Wright too, who overcame the game's limits to give out some fantastic music. Nice to see him in the doc with a variety of keyboards in the background. The passion clearly still shows.

[WillLem]

Great documentary, although it did start to feel more like an advert for the mobile game towards the end. I found it a bit of a "" moment when the talking heads were struggling to remember the classic 8 skills, and one of them didn't even know you could rescue Blockers, which betrays that they probably haven't completed L1!

The Amiga editor was a beast, being able to switch between gameplay and editing on the fly must have been excellent.

I'd love to see Steve's rejected levels in some sort of re-release, or maybe we could get in touch and see if he still has them in some format?

And yes, we NEEEEEEEEEED ONLINE MULTIPLAYER LEMMINGS!!!

@Charles - any chance of this happening in SuperLemminiToo?

[grams88]

I noticed the Guardian did an article about the documentary.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/feb/17/the-sprites-clearly-do-not-look-like-actual-lemmings-the-inside-story-of-an-iconic-video-game

[mobius]

Great documentary, although it did start to feel more like an advert for the mobile game towards the end. I found it a bit of a "" moment when the talking heads were struggling to remember the classic 8 skills, and one of them didn't even know you could rescue Blockers, which betrays that they probably haven't completed L1!

The Amiga editor was a beast, being able to switch between gameplay and editing on the fly must have been excellent.

I'd love to see Steve's rejected levels in some sort of re-release, or maybe we could get in touch and see if he still has them in some format?

And yes, we NEEEEEEEEEED ONLINE MULTIPLAYER LEMMINGS!!!

@Charles - any chance of this happening in SuperLemminiToo?

Lix and Clones already exist

I didn't see that part; "not remembering the classic 8 skills" wow

when you say Steve's rejected levels are you talking about something else or the 'missing levels' that were made but didn't make the cut of L1? At one point namida actually contacted Mike Daily about them who responded but seemed to indicate he wasn't very motivated to release them any time soon if at all. Of course its possible somebody else has access to them now after Exient or whatever bought rights (or not rights but whatever the hell it is) to the game and files were exchanged or something or another i don't remember crap.

Honestly it was nice but I wasn't all that crazy about this documentary in general. Reason being it seemed to me like most 'ordinary' game reviews in that the people making it sort of gloss over the game and don't really get into any nerdy details like AskMojo.com or JonTron's top 10 and stuff like that. Yes Mike and others told a detailed story but it wasn't much new to me. Most of that I remember hearing at the 25th (I think?) anniversary thing where Mike and all the rest did a thing that was like a press conference like thing. That's the first time we heard about the missing levels by the way.

[WillLem]

Lix and Clones already exist

Yes, but neither of these are Lemmings!

when you say Steve's rejected levels are you talking about something else or the 'missing levels' that were made but didn't make the cut of L1?

He made some levels that were rejected and didn't make the cut, apparently because they were either too hard or too easy!

[607]

If anyone hasn't seen it yet, I would recommend it! It is quite good, and I certainly heard some things I didn't know. It is also enjoyable to hear about the things you do know, as it is well-made, and it's just nice to see and hear a lot of these people talk (but most particularly Gary Timmons: what a joy!). Having read some comments on here and on YouTube about the mobile game, I was expecting half of the documentary to be about it, but that wasn't at all true. In fact, I don't think the section on it was any longer than it had to be! It is cool to see what's going on with Lemmings now, rather than the documentary being solely retrospective, in my opinion.

[messedupface]

I'm just watching it on you tube now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbAVNKdk9gA

[CrystalCore]

Great documentary.

[Adrian060756]

I too watched that documentary. It was sad learning of Ian Hetherington's passing not long after the documentary was made, he just made it in RIP.

In point form:

1. I just found the documentary a little boring in places, firstly it spent roughly 30 minutes or so in the beginning going into the background of the team of devs and how they all met at computer club etc. It's fine to go into detail about their backgrounds but to spend nearly 30 minutes on it? And this was before the game was even mentioned.

2. Also none of the ports of Lemmings got a mention, so nobody talked about the SNES/NES/Master System/Mega Drive/Atari Lynx/MS DOS versions etc at all. We didn't all grow up playing the Commodore Amiga original.

3. There should have been more detail on the music by Tim Wright (Cold Storage) in the doc rather than a mere 4 minutes of it. The music is a really big part of the Lemmings experience and there just wasn't much talked about.

4. I don't know why the documentary featured Youtubers who were obviously not that familiar to the game as Larry Bundy and Tristabytes didn't even know there were 8 skills lol! It was like getting someone off the street and paying them to participate in something they know nothing about. At least get actual fans of the game who know it in and out to comment on the game for the doc.

5. The last part was spent advertising the new mobile game for too long.

If I had to rate the documentary out of 10 I would give it a 4. Loved Gary talking about his original art and how the cover of the game came to be, also loved Tim Wright's 4 minutes of fame explaining about the music but the rest was a bit boring, too long on boring parts and too short on interesting parts.

[Lehnah]

I rewatched the doctor recently when I was travelling. It's such a love letter to the series and really has me wanting to play the games again. I realise I had Lemmings 2 on the Mega Drive but never finished it. Might have to boot up an emulator and fix that.