Fantastic piece of gaming history there. Would be great if it was made publicly available.

@aldob5681

3 жыл бұрын

Right now it is still lost

There really needs to be copyright reform across the board. There's no way a company who had 0 effort put into a 30 year old creation should have any more say in that particular product, especially if they aren't actively selling that edition of the game.

@tzuyd

2 жыл бұрын

The original period for copyright retention was 14 years. More recent studies have concluded that that still to this day performs the ultimate trade off between profit and creativity. As I'm sure you know, we can all thank Disney for the horrible abomination copyright law has turned in to.

@CoalCoalJames

2 жыл бұрын

@@tzuyd Disney are EVIL!!!! they advocated and pushed through extension's to copyright end of life and extended it many times. Now we have to deal with their bullshit when we watn to upload a 60 year old piece of content for a collage / meme / fair use on almost all social media platform's.

@tainio

2 жыл бұрын

​@@CoalCoalJames The same Disney that stole most of their material

I’m guessing that the corruption was caused by the lack of a trap door - there was probably a dangling pointer and the lemmings spawning would have been overwriting random memory.

@tzuyd

2 жыл бұрын

It wasn't random corruption, the entire level was completely untouched, but the horizontal aspect for each row was offset from the last. But you're right in that it could have been because the trap door was missing, thinking programatically those lemmings appearing may have been generated by an internal trap door that was inserted by the code instead of overwriting the existing tiles and thus possibly generating the offset. Or, just some discrepancy with how he laid out tiles of differing sizes on top of or next to each other. There were probably alignment guidelines the creators had to obey.

@fluffycritter

2 жыл бұрын

@@tzuyd Ah, good point, maybe the stage was an odd width and that led to some weirdness in how it got saved and reloaded due to byte alignment. Or the ‘random’ trap door was overwriting the stage width or something.

Wow! This is something like the holy grail for me in my youth. Back in 'the day', 9 year old me was utterly Lemmings obsessed. I had *two* homemade lemmings jumpers, and may well still have a cuddly lemming made by my mum to prove it! Not long after the release of Lemmings, might have been around the release of 'Oh No More Lemmings' in late 1991, An official level editor was promised under the title 'Lemmings Construction Kit'. This title appeared in many mail order software adverts in Amiga magazines at the time, and I remember obsessing over this at the time. My word I wanted this so badly! The thought of being able to create my own lemmings levels blew my tiny mind. It was such a crushing letdown that this never got released.... Oh, to get my hands on a copy of that level editor would be like all my childhood Christmases come at once. I sincerely hope this gets made available.

What an interesting paradox at the end of the video - had the efforts of the retro community not intervened then the IP might have been lost but in doing so we're stymied for use! At least we get to see it in action thank you RMC and DMA!

@kaitlyn__L

3 жыл бұрын

With something like this I think, X years after last saleable attempt, the rights should revert back to the individuals who made it; then they could give or withhold permission themselves.

@delusionnnnn

3 жыл бұрын

@@kaitlyn__L That's how copyright is supposed to work. In the Copyright Act of 1790, it was 14 years, with a second period of 14 years allowed as an extension if you applied for it. If that was good enough when news travelled at the speed of ship and horseback, and when cultural innovation was expected not to disrupt itself over one's lifetime, surely it's far too long when news travels around the world nearly instantly, and where cultural trends can happen and become dated in a matter of months. Frankly, I think five years with no extension is more than adequate. Copyright is a publication right, not a moral right, and the fact that it now lasts, effectively, forever allows it to be confused for one. If its primary purpose is to gatekeep people from participating in their own culture, it's theft from the commons.

A Lemmings level editor included in the retail version would have been so nice back in the time. I dreamed about that many times. Thanks mate for sharing this !

Even their level editors were revolutionary! No wonder DMA ended up making GTA, Red Dead Redemtion, Manhunt and Bully... all of these games have left a mark on the video game industry and in most cases helped push what we could expect from a game forward so consistantly.

I think simply placing the emitter for the Lemmings to fall out of before first running the level is the key to it not corrupting the tilemap.

@WeedyWeedSmoker

3 жыл бұрын

That… Or maybe not painting too many tiles one on top of another in the same layer ?

@johnparker007

3 жыл бұрын

@@WeedyWeedSmoker Could be! If ever it gets released from under its NDA, I'm sure someone will rustle up a patch :)

I'm quite surprised they never officially released a Lemmings level creator set for anything. Does the disk contain the scrapped music too? (the copyright infringing tracks like Star Wars, A-Team Etc.)

@TheTurnipKing

3 жыл бұрын

I'm assuming they originally planned to produce more lemmings expansions.

@CastleFamilyThe

3 жыл бұрын

@@TheTurnipKing i think Oh No! and two Christmas expansions was quite alot as it was!

@seashore8158

3 жыл бұрын

But Hello you....

@tonelemoan

3 жыл бұрын

@@TheTurnipKing exactly this, yes.

@pubjoe

3 жыл бұрын

I'm still waiting on my pre-order of Lemmings Construction Kit from Special Reserve. Thirty years since I sent the postal order.

I remember working at my local ISP, Zetnet, in the mid 90s, and one of our customers was DMA Design (another was Capcom). I worked on technical support, and one day a guy from DMA Design called up, wanting help with some problem (I really can't remember what), but I ended up talking to him for ages about their game Hired Guns, which I was a huge fan of. He mentioned that they were then working on a Hired Guns 2 - I wonder what ever happened to that? We also had an advert in various magazines for our dedicated Quake server. This went out in all the computer and games magazines owned by a particular publisher - that led to me getting a phone call from some guy who wanted to get past a particular level on Quake on his N64. I think he was quite disappointed I was unable to help.

Love this piece of gaming history. Recently I'd been wondering how they put the levels together. Don't forget the Irn Bru bottles in the Highland set!

Lemmings is one of the best games ever made.

I have been trying to contact Mike Dailly for years. We met him up in Dundee when we visited up show our artwork off and Dave Jones and Mike showed us lemmings way back when it was a DPaint animation of the theo little lemmings running about.

The thing that's always blown my mind about level designers, is how one judges the comparative difficulty of levels and then the degree of increase in difficulty. Such an under appreciated skill!

The background music choices were on point for this one! Great Job!

An ABSOLUTE treasure of a find! Great job!

Format decay is utterly terrifying.

@squirlmy

2 жыл бұрын

I remember being assured by marketers in the mid-eighties that there was no reason to think CD's wouldn't remain readable indefinitely, forever. Now, I was a naive teenager at the time, but the marketing really was outrageous. Now I can't really trust future claims, for example, about solid state memory, or anything.

@TruculentSheep

2 жыл бұрын

@@squirlmy Whoever said that about CDs had never met a toddler.

I believe Lemmings birthed my curiosity for classical music! Got incredible appreciation for it, unforgettable tunes

Brilliant. Imagine how much more money they could have made by selling the editor!

the "it's owned by sony" ending is so depressing. I don't think sony wil ever answer even if everybody tries to contact them about this.

@jason_a_smith_gb

3 жыл бұрын

Is very sad that Sony have not allowed more to happen with this product.

@jason_a_smith_gb

3 жыл бұрын

Well Sony are a bit of a Lenming!

@DJRickDawson

3 жыл бұрын

@@jakartaishell3073 stops you getting addicted. manage up to 3 levels on a full 60 energy till depleted and have to wait till energy is back. rather have the limits on the actions instead of just energy units. and no I'm not paying to play.

@DJRickDawson

3 жыл бұрын

@@jakartaishell3073 and it was there on the play store before it was called the 30th anniversary version.

Reminds of my days spent building levels for 4x4 evo 2 on the PC. The level editor included this ability to import height maps made from a bitmap file. With white being heighest, black being lowest and shades of grey for all between. It was really easy and produced some stunning results. Good that you've got this and i'm sure the statute of limitation will be up in 40 odd years and we'll be able to share it!

That package design and game was very memorable! Enjoyed finishing those. Nice to see those old game disks! Big like from me! 👍

This reminds me of getting all my work done in primary school and getting to play Lemmings on the class Acorn 😆

Fantastic job! Thank you Neil for all you are doing to preserve gaming history!

I played the heck out of Lemmings back in the day. It's still a favorite of mine in 2021. I play it a few times a month and still have my original complete in box copy. Such a fun game. I hope some day the level editor disks that are now digitized can be made publicly available.

On a related note to the Worms comment, this kinda makes me think of a feature in Worms DC(an AGA only, not even a PC or console port, version of the original game with extra features) where you could create your own tileset for the level randomiser. It was different to making your own levels like in the original(and still retained in DC with the ability to use more colours due to being AGA only), there was a template with a bunch of boxes, and each of these boxes had a purpose, for instance one for ground texture, one of the "grass" that grew on the ground texture, then the rest could be filled with random objects that would appear. At the level generator, just type the name of your template and it would randomise a level using your tileset.

This is amazing stuff thank you both so much for sharing!

Very cool vid. Thanks for showing us this Neil and Mike!

😱 Wow! Thank you RMC and Mike Daily! I hope this encourages more devs to do the same. I’m sure if Sony made this public it would give this cult classic game new life and many more fantastic levels would be made.

Superb.... Almost emotional. Really enjoyed it.

I had a chuckle at the end, retrieving the trapped boat. Great video

Excellent preservation there. Anyone ever find out why the exit door never lined up with the actual lemmings?

Great to hear the code has been preserved now. Be easy to back up further 😊👍🏻 Hope this can happen with other classic code!

This is awesome! I was like another review at first. There was the level editor. Wow!

I highly recommend booting your Amiga into NTSC mode so that Lemmings (and other games) play fully screen rather than having that big black bar at the bottom and having everything squashed. If you haven’t already Neil then maybe you should do a video about the topic.

This reminded me of the new apogee games crystal caves HD and secret agent HD which have level editor/creator. Great video and maybe in the future more legendary games will come back in HD and have level editors.

Really neat, great find, really hope it can be shared.

I love this. What an amazing presentation achievement.

Love this episode, excellent piece of gaming history preserved!

You reminded me of the time when I got to design some Chaos Engine levels due to the amazing work of some folks over at EAB. Really hope this editor will see 'the light of day' and become available (frankly one way or another).

I was always super proud that Lemmings and GTA came from Dundee! I'm fairly sure that as well as having the office in Discovery House (as per the disk label), later on DMA also had one in Luna Place, just along the road. I used to pass it every day on my way to work, you couldn't miss the games posters in some windows, and the paper taped over the others to keep out the nosey people!

i love these type of video. Thanks to the programmer and you for sharing.

Lemmings - one of the finest 2 player games of all time.

One of my favourite Amiga games, thanks for your presentation.

Nice one! More meat on the bone on a very significant game, well polished video!

This is my favorite game of all time, it's so great to see that!

@DanielMonteiroNit

3 жыл бұрын

You got good taste, my friend! (Nice surprise to see you around here!)

I’m sure if this was a built in feature in the final product the review scores would have been even higher. So great to see it in action.

Perfect episode

That's really cool. Nostalgia for when I was 8 years old at Christmas.

I remember being like 4 or 5 years old and playing Lemmings (I think it was clans) on my mom's computer. I had no idea of what I was doing and finishing a level was a rare occurrence, it didn't help that I couldn't read yet.

Awesome to hear that Mike was finally able to recover the data from these disks. I wonder if there's any chance of the "lost levels" (the ones that didn't make the cut) seeing the light of day now...

Incredible how this channel is unearthing and helping preserve little slices of gaming history!

I love that colour of your Amiga 😊👍

Great Video as always, I'd love to get my hands on that editor.

loved lemmings !

Great video. You seem to cover everything I grew up with! Subbed.

Thanks for this video, made me feel a bit old but I’ve enjoyed it very much. ♥️

Fascinating to see that early loading screen for the original Lemmings, definite Monty Python vibes to the lettering. As you say, level design is difficult - and more so in a game like Lemmings that relies on pixel-based collisions. I'm wondering if there are similar editors around for the many conversions (especially the C64 and arcade games). And let's hope the Amiga editors can be made public in the end, it would be amazing to get new levels to play after all these years.

Lemmings had a HUGE impact on me, since it was the first game i've ever played. I still get the feeling and nostalgia from it, but honestly i dont enjoy it anymore. It's a great game, it shaped my taste in games, art style, music and introduced me into FM synthesis, but that time is over. Makes me kinda sad :(

The moment I saw the boat in the pond I was sure it would get stuck in the reeds!^^

Please upload this to archive.org!

I wish these disks were out there for all imagine the amount of fan level packs for websites.

I loved lemmings as a kid a played the hell out of the ZX spectrum demo. Was a few years before I got to play a decent full versio.

If I had a copy of this in the early 90s, I probably would have sunk hours and hours into it - I loved to make my own levels for games back in the day - Sokoban, Doom, etc. Looking back, my levels were not that great though.

one of the only game i played way back then loved it

Great video, great game.

One of my favourite games, I'm currently coding a lemmings inspired game for Android

Can we talk about how amazing those boats are? They're like a video game come to life. Virtual reality, only moreso!

really cool thanx

Very interesting, and if you can't distribute it then surely the obvious thing to do is set the whole thing up as part of your exhibition space so that people can create levels when they visit, and save them off for other visitors to enjoy!

Great video 😀

@RMCRetro

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you

Super Lemmings Maker!

Lemmings is one of my all-time favourite Amiga games so I'd love the opportunity to create my own levels.

Got a sony kx 14cp1 hooked up to my amiga 500 and it looked funny like half a screen. Fortunately after seeing your CRT in the background its exactly the same as mine. Thanks for the upload great content. Personally i like seeing games on genuine hardware rather than screen capture.

It’s a west highland white terrier or a westie in the Highland tile set. Scotties are black.

@RMCRetro

3 жыл бұрын

I stand corrected thank you!

Thats impressive

was up late looking at retro computers new sub here thanks for the great channel!

I will say that Lemmings on AMIGA was one of the games I played a lot back in the day along with EA ZANY GOLF and various PD AND SHAREWARE TITLES many of which were superior to even commercial offerings. 😎

@RMCRetro

3 жыл бұрын

Finally! someone else who appreciates Zany Golf. that game deserves more love

Anyone missing the original game and/or feeling the itch to create levels themselves now: The NeoLemmix engine has been around for many years, and the community, albeit small, is still very active. ;)

really interesting great video

Yes please!. just short of about 30 years ago I lost a good number of days (at least 7) to Lemmings on my Commodore Amiga 1200.

Yeah, be honest! During a game a lot of Lemmings got lost, where are they now? Not many players do care, but Lemmings have feelings too!

Oh wow, that yellow PC is striking.

Universal Amiga Emulator already has the feature. It can read amiga formatted disks on the PC! all you do is enable the 2 floppy drive trick on the PC!

Neil, I drool longingly at your studio space. Here in central FL, US, one is lucky to find a 15'x15' tool shed for under $750/mo.

@flecom5309

3 жыл бұрын

come to south florida, you can get a 5'x5' tool shed for just twice that!

I did let's play Lemmings a few months ago for it's 30th anniversary, and months before that, Holiday Lemmings 1994, so to hear about this was exciting

Thats so cool, getting dev tools! I hope it will be released sometime, maybe it would give Lemmings a second life😅 I wouldn't mind paying a few euros for this btw.

@nosferadu

3 жыл бұрын

*mind

It's up to Sony to give permission to release them? Oh, in other words, nobody will ever be able to get a copy of them. :(

OMG I REMEMBER THAT TITLE SCREEN FROM THE DEMO!

LGR is gonna have a blast with this

Glad to know I wasn't the only one thinking of _Worms_ with things like the Lemmings exploding and destroying parts of the landscape in the process.

Wow! and I was just playing the HTML 5 version of Lemmings last night. You're right about it being addictive haha, only expected to play one level for old time's sake.... some time later.... =D

Why is it every time I watch one of your videos, I feel old? Hehehe...

@RMCRetro

3 жыл бұрын

Is it because of my own youthful looks?

@JenniferinIllinois

3 жыл бұрын

@@RMCRetro Perhaps. 😉

@jothain

3 жыл бұрын

Dpn't worry. I think this applies to 99,9% of watcher base (at least) :)

@JenniferinIllinois

3 жыл бұрын

@@jothain Phew, glad I'm not alone. 30 years since the release of Lemmings just blows mind. I remember the hours and hours and hours I spent playing it.

@JenniferinIllinois

3 жыл бұрын

@@blitzwing1 OH good lord, I passed the 4s already!!!!! 🤣

I was in my 20s before I realised a lemming was a real animal. Before then I only knew lemmings from this game!

I just knew that would happen at the end :)

Fantastic video as always. You know what's missing on your channel? The MSX ;-)

@RMCRetro

3 жыл бұрын

The MSX.

@Fularu

3 жыл бұрын

@@RMCRetro Unless I'm mistaken you have no videos showcasing the MSX line of computers (MSX, MSX2, MSX2+ and MSX Turbo R). The MSX and MSX2 variants were released in Europe by at least Philips and Sony (I own a Philips MSX 1 for example). Very interesting and forward thinking line of computers for their time (open standard)

This is amazing such a shame they never realised this ,i would have love this back then …hell I’d love this now haha

Greetings RMC, fist time I have watched this early!

@RMCRetro

3 жыл бұрын

Greetings Daniel!

I bet Mike sent the boats just so he could see a video of them being used on the pond :)

Was a fan of King Arthur's World on the SNES, which took mechanics from this game.