Skip to main content

Lemmings came out 25 years ago today, watch a 6-hour playthrough

Lemmings came out 25 years ago today, watch a 6-hour playthrough

Share this story

Remember Lemmings? Odds are against it. Like the suicidal animals on which the classic video game drew inspiration, the Lemmings brand has in recent years gone off a cliff — the cliff of public awareness!

There is a chance that you do remember Lemmings, and that the game has very special nook in your heart, a comfy spot warmed by the fluffy blanket of childhood memories. Maybe it's you who is represented by the tiny hills and valleys on the right side of the graph. You're still searching "Lemmings + Game" every now and then, hoping for a big return that never comes. I do, sometimes.

I played Lemmings to death on my school's computer, and became academically obsessed with actual lemmings, writing a third grade report on the critters. As I learned, lemmings don't follow one another blindly to their deaths — as popularly believed. That notion was fabricated by none other than a Walt Disney film crew for the Academy Award-winning doc, White Wilderness. A CBC documentary, Cruel Camera, later revealed the Disney filmmakers flew a batch lemmings to a new location, where they were forced off a cliff with cameras rolling.

I digress. We must think happier thoughts on the 25th anniversary of the game's release on Amiga. Let's watch a 6-hour playthrough of the original game, before all its follow-ups, on DOS.

Correction: Lemmings was first released on Amiga. The original version of this article did not mention the Amiga hardware.