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Lemmings for Windows


Genre: Puzzle
Release Year: 1995
Developer: DMA Design
Publisher: Dice Multi Media
Age Rating: 3+
Playability Status: Perfect
Tested On: Windows 7 x64
Availability: Copyright retained - Still sold

It’s an urban myth that lemmings are suicidal. What actually causes their apparent suicidal behaviour is not a desire to end their own lives but simply misadventure. You see, during population booms, lemmings like to explore. It’s during this exploring of new geography that the lemmings often meet with their demise. The green haired lemmings in this computer game also have no desire to die, but also lack the intelligence not to follow their fellow rodents off the edge of a cliff. Fortunately you, the player, have been given a limited number of super lemming skills to dish out. With these powers you can build bridges, break walls and climb over obstacles to clear a path. Lemmings was released to almost universal critical acclaim in 1991 for the powerful Commodore Amiga home computer. This port for Windows sadly lacks the Amiga’s 2 player mode but otherwise retains the same look and feel of the original. All the original games levels are here (minus the special levels created with the graphics of other Amiga games) as well as the expansion disc.

Installation

Installing the game is very easy. Place the Lemmings for Windows CD into your computers CD/DVD drive. Open the CD in Windows Explorer and then double click on the “WINLEMM” folder. Now, double click on the “LEMMINGS” or “LEMMINGS.EXE” file. The game will now install. There may be an error message that tells you that an uninstaller cannot be created, but since there’s only a simple save file copied to your PC it hardly matters. To play the game any time, you simply click on the LEMMINGS.EXE file on the CD-ROM.

No other compatibility options are required to run the game.

Tweaking visual options

To tweak options in the game, click on the “File” menu and choose “Options”. The window shown below will then appear:-


The options are fairly self-explanatory. You can turn the sound options on or off to taste. If “Visual Sound Effects” are turned on, then the game will make a sound when you click an icon. Under graphics options, set the resolution to High and the Zoom to either 1 or 2. You can try 4, but this made the game too big even for our 1080p monitor!

Known problems

When you first start the game, you will see a flickering message underneath two icons. This scrolly message is running so quickly on a modern PC that it is unreadable. This problem extends into the game too. For longer levels the game has a fast forward option, which is useful if you are waiting for a Lemming to walk across the level. Fast forward goes so fast on modern PC’s that you cannot see what’s happening.

Lemmins?

Although Lemmings for Windows runs very well for an old game, you may prefer to download this excellent remake instead. Featuring better music and a full screen display and the special extra levels from the Amiga version, Lemmins is probably the best version of Lemmings to play on a modern PC. You can download it here. The game is downloaded as a zip file, which means you will need to open the zipped folder once the download is complete then copy the contents to your computer. Once that is done, use the “Lemmins.exe” or “Lemmins” executable file to start the game. If the game crashes back to the desktop with a “Memory Access Violation” error, simply add Lemmins.exe to your Data Execution Prevention exclusion list. For details of how to do this, click here.

6 comments

  1. ansionnach says:

    Lemmins is broken. It doesn’t fully replicate the behaviour of Lemmings and consequently it is often possible to solve puzzles very simply in ways the originals do not allow.

  2. Jim says:

    Dude! Freaking awesome work! Works great on Win7…

  3. SpooferJahk says:

    Another port alternative I would HIGHLY recommend for this version is called Lemmini. It is an engine of Lemmings for Java that replicates the Amiga version while using the assets from the Windows version as a base. It even uses the Amiga music and includes the levels that were cut from the Windows port for it as well. It runs great as long as Java behaves on your machine.

  4. jack la la says:

    how can i install this on windows 10 i have the cd but it wont let me and i dont have the file WINLEMM wtf?!?!?!!?

  5. Bill says:

    Lemmings remake can not be reached from this page. I loaded it from elsewhere. It starts, on both my Windows 7 and 10 laptops. I choose PLAYER 1, then click PLAY LEVEL. The game immediately fails with a MEMORY ACCESS VIOLATION. I tried several compatibility mode settings and I have the same problem. I’m lost.

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