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‘The sprites clearly do not look like actual lemmings’: the inside story of an iconic video game
Dodgy graphics, mysteriously sourced computers and a bemused artist: a new Youtube documentary celebrates 30 years since the release of computing classic Lemmings
When you try to describe the much-loved video game Lemmings, it sounds like a wind-up. Your mission: herding a collection of tiny, green-haired, blue-jumpered, bipedal sprites from a trapdoor entrance to a safe exit without them dying horribly. It looked, if not bad, then wilfully basic even for 1991. But, released years before mobile phone games were a thing, it was nonetheless a fiendishly addictive game that feels like the spiritual precursor to the likes of Angry Birds. And it was manna to many, many kids like me, whose sole household computing device was a rubbish PC with a horrible four-colour CGA screen that basically couldn’t play any video game of the time … except Lemmings!
To mark 30 years since its release, Exient – current holders of the franchise – has made a YouTube documentary about it. Made remotely, Lemmings: Can You Dig It? largely consists of interviews with the people involved in the creation of the original game, plus spirited nostalgic interjections from various nerdy talking heads.
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