Dos Lemmings was also my first. Interesting story: One day, at some family thing we went to, there was a desktop computer that had the game Lemmings on it. Luckily, my dad happened to have a floppy disk on him, so he copied over the files of the game to it and that's how I first got the game. Later on, my dad bought the CD version that bundles both Lemmings and ONML, which is pretty much the Dos version except it has a few pixels added to the fall distance before splatting, therefore making levels like the 4 WAFD levels completely trivial in that they will survive the fall off the platform, meaning you don't have to do anything in order to beat them if you have the increased fall distance! However, I didn't know this at first. I just happened to let a lemming fall off the platform and was shocked to see the lemming survive instead of splatting. At the same time, I wonder if I first realized this difference in Mayhem 1 before discovering this triviality in the WAFD levels. If you have the increased fall distance, the drop is not splat height at the start of Mayhem 1, therefore you don't need to spend any builders to make a safe landing zone.
Also in regards to ONML, I believe I first discovered the game at one of my relatives' house, before officially owning it due to my dad having bought the CD that bundles L1 and ONML.
Interestingly I found (and still find) the Crazy-rank harder than Wild and even Wicked.
Yea, the jump in difficulty from Tame to Crazy is huge, much larger than the jump from Fun to Tricky of L1. Essentially, Crazy is already like Taxing difficulty. After that, the difficulty doesn't really increase all that much with the Wild and Wicked ranks, before increasing significantly again for the Havoc rank.
I remember Wild 13 stumping me pretty badly and I gave up on the game for a while, but interestingly enough I didn't have any problems with the level when I came back to it. I think I was simply confused as to why I kept losing, only to realize to my horror how very strict the time limit is when I saw it.
Havoc 10 was another, though I remember the solution came to me one morning while lying awake in bed. I tried it out and was happy to see that what I thought in my mind does indeed work. You can imagine the elementary kid in me feeling so smart as a result
Needless to say, I actually discovered this compression through traps on this level first over any other official level, meaning I never realized the intended way to do Compression Method 1, only because I had always solved it by going out to the right over the top, either with or without bashing through steel as well. On the CD version, the drop is actually safe, therefore it's not necessary to bash through steel to reduce the height of the fall. However, there is an inconsistency that can happen in that sometimes the basher will splat while the rest survive. Then again, maybe it's not too inconsistent. I think it will only happen if he happens to make a stroke that causes him to move over empty air, therefore causing him to fall instead of transitioning to a walker first because he bashed in such a way that he stops before going over the edge.
When Lemmings 2 The Tribes was released on the Amiga I bought that game, too. The only golden fragment of the talisman I was able to achieve was the one for the Shadow tribe. Later parts of the Lemmings series didn't interest me which is true for Lemmings 3 as well (which was also released on the Amiga).
Lemmings 2 is an ok game. Not too good but it's not too bad either. IIRC, there are still some really frustrating levels in each of the 12 tribes, especially those that require the fan. The most recent game I played that isn't L1 or ONML is L3D, which was last summer. I thought the controls would be too frustrating for me, but it's actually a decent game. It got more criticism than it should had IMO. This being said, I do look forward to playing through namida's LP3D pack at some point
I didn't play the game anymore for more than two decades until I discovered NeoLemmix some years ago. Lemmings Plus 1 was the first pack I played - the first of many so far. There's only one I aborted while two still wait for completion (by only one level each).
Ah, if I'm not mistaken, one from Sublems and actually 2 more from Deceit's Lemmings, though the final level after the one you're stuck on for the latter is ridiculously easy: Infinite amount of every skill and you have 1 hour (60 minutes for the time limit) to beat it. It only takes a long time because there's 1000 lemmings, but the solution only takes about 4-5 minutes to do. Finally, you're only required to save up to half (500), but given you have infinite of every skill it's still very easy to save everyone.