LEMMINGS

Lemmings is one of my favourite computer games of all time. I don't recall if the first time I played it was on my Commodore 64 or my Atari ST, but it was certainly before I owned a PC running Windows.

The lemmings are tiny people with green hair, who follow each other, even if that leads them right into disaster. As the player, your job is to instruct the lemmings you choose to perform certain tasks, which will save as many lemmings as possible from killing themselves.

The picture above features the most basic level of lemmings. In this level they can't even kill themselves. The player has instructed one of the lemmings to become a digger. The digger has dug a hole down through the ground so that he and the other lemmings can escape home.

The picture above also shows another basic level. If any lemming falls too far he will die, so here a number of lemmings have been assigned as blockers, who prevent their friends from precipitous death. Unfortunately it is a case of once a blocker, always a blocker. So the blockers sacrifice their lives to save their friends.

Lemmings can be assigned many other roles including bashers (they knock holes through walls), climbers, builders and parachutists. In the early levels a big clue is which skills and how many of each have been made available for the player to use. In the more complex levels, skills are made available that the player does not need to use, just to throw the player off the scent.

At the time of writing this, there are internet sites from which various versions of lemmings can be downloaded. It is also possible to find sites where lemmings can be played online.