Lemmings

INFO
The popularity of the original version (Amiga) of the game, led to immediate ports to many other platforms: Panasonic 3DO, Acorn Archimedes, Amstrad CPC, Apple IIGS, Macintosh, Atari Lynx, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Amiga CD32 Amiga CDTV, MS-DOS, Nintendo NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, MGT SAM Coupe, Sega Game Gear, Sega Master System, Sega Mega Drive (Genesis), Sinclair ZX Spectrum!

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The game is divided into a number of levels featuring both destructible landscape elements such as rocks and indestructible sections such as steel plates. There are also numerous obstacles including gaps, high walls, pools of water or lava spots and several traps. Each level includes one or more entrance points and one or more exit points. The goal is to guide a certain percentage of the little blue-shirted Lemmings, from the entrance to the exit, by clearing or creating a safe passage through the landscape. Each lemming will walk in one direction ignoring any other lemming in its way unless assigned to a special task (available in the bar at the bottom section of the screen) to help making a path to the desired destination. Those tasks mainly involve: Climbing, Blocking, Manufacturing, Punching, Digging, Mining and the most impressive: Blasting! Those skills are available based on the level design (not all of them are always available). Note that, the little green-haired Lemmings will die if they fall from too high, into water or lava, off the map, or get caught in a trap; they also die after being assigned to perform the blasting/bomber skill.
The control system is great and entrusted to the mouse (where supported) that proves, as always, perfect for this type of games. Just for the record, note that the video game console version supports only the gamepad which makes it frustrating enough but overall, Lemmings is an excellent puzzle game that will keep you interested for many hours!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
I would expect better visuals for the ZX Spectrum version but on each level, although we see some of the original details, the colors are very limited (each stage has one or two colors maximum)! Also, the animation is very slow! The sound has a nice intro tune, whilst there is no in-game sound at all(!) The game was probably developed to run on the 48K machines and did not take advantage of the 128K (which could easily use more sound data). Either way, the game is very playable and offers great fun when running on the 48K little Speccy!

GAMEPLAY SAMPLE VIDEO
On our video below you may watch 15 different versions of the game.
The Sinclair ZX Spectrum version is at 00:21.