There's the fact it only runs in 640x480 mode is a bit of a downer. Why? Because while I feel Mike has been a bit harsh on the game in his review, he's spot on in saying that it does feel a bit rushed. But, alas, not all is perfect in lemming land. And given that it's been an absolute age since the Lemmings' last outing, the lemmings' return is very welcome indeed. The rotating levels idea works pretty well too and simplifies rather than complicates things as it could have been if it was badly implemented. The level design is on a par with DMA Design's original Lemmings levels in terms of the cleverness and fiendishness of design, and the learning curve is evenly set so you're not thrown in at the deep end. Fortunately, you can press the P key to pause the game and get a good look at the level before you send your lemmings to their doom. Aside from utilising the aforementioned acid-walking and water-walking lemmings, these levels feature a variety of traps and hazards. Tarantula have also managed to knock up a wide variety of thoroughly playable levels that, as the game progresses, move from being challenging to downright tricky but never become frustrating, something that made the original Lemmings such a joy to play. By doing this Tarantula have managed to subtly improve upon the game's original format yet have avoided changing the formula so much as to alienate existing Lemmings fans. There are levels where you find yourself dealing with two different varities of lemmings at once, perhaps having to use lemmings of the first kind to clear the path of lemmings of a second kind and vice-versa. Mostly you'll be playing with the standard blue bodies and green-haired lemmings with their ability to die horribly on demand, but on other occasions you get to deal with acid walking and water-walking lemmings who can survive walking over acid and water respectively (no doubt the latter ability will go down a storm with any particularly evangelical rattlesnake handling preachers). However, the lemmings do now come in subtly different flavours. And whereas Lemmings 2 + 3 gave the lemmings a wide variety of skills, such as throwing snowballs, firing ropes, pouring water and more, Lemmings Revolution takes a non-revolutionary step back to the lemmings' roots and sticks with the original skills featured in the first lemmings games. Just imagine Lemmings' 2D levels wrapped around a column so that either ends of the level meet and you've got a pretty good idea of how Lemmings Revolution works. I'm not going to go into a great deal of depth about the game's mechanics in this second op, since Mike Smithcovers that fairly well in his review. But for the past two or three years, things have been rather quiet on the lemming front, so it seemed about time for them to put in another appearance, this time in the form of Lemmings Revolution. The lemmings even put in an appearance in Operation Lemming a rather now hard to come by game which, with Psygnosis's permission, let you blast away at the lemmings, Operation Wolf style, with the proceeds from the sale of the game going to charity. It also appeared in a number of other incarnations including two 2D sequels, a rather lacklustre 3D version, and a somewhat tenuous tie-in game going by the name of 'Lemmings Paintball'. A simple yet strangely addictive and hugely original game, Lemmings was so popular that it achieved the accolade of being translated onto pretty much every platform ever, from the Amiga, where it started, to the Gameboy, to the Megadrive and beyond. 'Let's go!' - this high pitched cry signalled the beginning of many a gamer's troubles as they struggled to guide the green haired Lemmings to safety across a myriad of dangerous levels.
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