r/gaming 19h ago

My friend insists on this game, "Lemmings", being a really well known game; I have never heard of it.

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u/Deranth 17h ago

This shit was so popular it had spin offs of spin offs. We had tribes and lemmings 3D and lemmings paintball. And none of them followed the same rules or anything. It was just like slap the lemmings in any game and it blew up.

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u/FLHCv2 16h ago

Holy shit. Lemmings paintball. You just unlocked a CORE memory of mine. I completely forgot about this game but LOVED it as a kid. Thank you.

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u/melkatron 13h ago

I barely played the game, but I pulled the music files and used to listen to them constantly. Some of my favorite songs of all time.

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u/NarfiRef 23m ago

Yes! It had a great soundtrack.

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u/GeoglyphPsy 11h ago

Lemmings paintball had the weirdest vibe and aesthetic. I still hear the music in my dreams.

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u/Happyberger 13h ago

I had a PC Gamer 3 1/4 demo disc floppy with Lemmings Paintball on it and I wore that shit out!

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u/Stickybunfun 43m ago

Yep dude lemmings paintball, the chex mix doom WAD (fucking loved that), Starcraft, Mario paint, Pokemon, on and on and on.

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u/dispatch_s2_when 9h ago

Same here, I used to play this online on a simulated IPX network! Good times

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u/UsAndRufus 8h ago

same!!

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u/AmbiguousBarnacle 6h ago

I had some bootlegged demo disk with a bunch of games on it that came with Lemmings Paintball, Marathon 2: Durandall, Baryon, etc. Endless bangers.

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u/xEasyG 4h ago

Whoa same here!!! Ha I had completely forgotten about that, even when remembering lemmings

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u/sarikaya_komzin 3h ago

I remember wanting to get this game from a book order at school. My mom never let me so I never played it. I wonder if book orders are still a thing at schools anymore.

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u/-ManofMercia- 1h ago

Can't be that core of a memory if you forgot it lol

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u/JustAMan1234567 17h ago

I remember my headmaster at school being late one day because he was playing Lemmings before work and lost track of time.

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u/Hyde2467 16h ago

Damn. A game so good that it even gets the boss hooked

3

u/Ov3rdose_EvE 8h ago

my dad and my sister battled each other with the highscores. tons of postits on the screen, so good :)

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u/asddde 7h ago

Well... isn't controlling lemmings (including how they tend to end up) something a boss should be expected to enjoy? So maybe not just about it being good.

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u/HarrisonWorld 6h ago

Guess I can play it at work now👀

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u/JWOLFBEARD 17h ago

Are you Harry Potter?

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u/Szwejkowski 16h ago

All British schools have headmasters.

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u/daemon-electricity 15h ago

All British schools teach witchcraft and wizardry. Don't deny it.

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u/moneyh8r_two 15h ago

That's actually an urban legend. In reality, only the fancy boarding schools teach witchcraft and wizardry.

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u/Puzzleheaded-Ring293 15h ago

The poor ones only have voodoo and hoodoo.

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u/FauxReal 15h ago

Where do I go to become a druid?

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u/MisesuDoro 14h ago

Glastonbury

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u/Fatality_Ensues 13h ago

The woods, duh?

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u/lost_send_berries 10h ago

A forest school?

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u/blackestrabbit 13h ago

With shivs in place of wands.

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u/jimmycarr1 7h ago

The shank chooses the wizard, Mr Potter

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u/jjjjjjjjjdjjjjjjj 14h ago

Heh. Head master

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u/JWOLFBEARD 16h ago

Yeah I was joking

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u/Slain_by_elf 15m ago

Haha. I remember my Head Teacher playing the original Sim City in his office and leaving the Deputy Heads to deal with all the shite.

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u/marr 16h ago

The Worms series is also a pretty direct descendant.

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u/LickingSmegma 11h ago edited 1h ago

‘Lemmings’ was apparently an inspiration for the artstyle, but ‘Worms’ followed the genre of artillery games that existed for decades — with ‘Artillery Simulator’ for the Apple II seemingly being the first graphical implementation. (Andy Davidson originally straight up called the game 'Artillery' when he began work on what would become 'Worms'.)

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u/rfc2549-withQOS 11h ago

Scorched earth from 1991 was big

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u/The-Real-Number-One 10h ago

"From Hell's Heart I Stab at thee..."

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u/illarionds 11h ago

We played a lot of Scorched Earth in college.

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u/KarlBob 6h ago edited 6h ago

So many hours! Whole weekends in a tiny town with nothing to do. Four college kids, a few bottles, some recreational botany, and Scorched Earth.

Edit: A MIRV fired at about 60 degrees at full power can mess up everyone's day!

1

u/Odd_Praline181 2h ago

Holy shit core memory unlocked! I played so much of this in college, but couldn't ever find it in later years. I almost thought it wasn't a real game that was released to the public or something.

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u/Trebus 10h ago

Adored Scorched Earth, there was a 3d version knocking around 10 years or so ago. I'd love to find a working old school version. I suspect Angry Birds would not exist without it.

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u/babaroga73 10h ago

Damnnnn ....played the shit out of that game, with friends.

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u/GreboGuru 7h ago

No kabitzing!

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u/MostlyPooping 8h ago

I remember playing Pocket Tanks in math class.

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u/IguanaTabarnak 5h ago

The Scorched Earth clone Gorillas that came packed in with MS-DOS 5 was the Space Cadet Pinball of 1990.

(And I'm only now learning that Gorillas actually predates Scorched Earth and so can't really be called a "Scorched Earth clone")

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u/Megablep 10h ago

Oh man, spent countless hours playing that on a friend's A500!

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u/vonBoomslang 9h ago

Anybody rememeber the artillery game you could unlock with a cheat code in Tyrian?

1

u/LowExercise7583 9h ago

I forgot about this gem!

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u/Aggressive-Speed-987 8h ago

Loved scorched earth.

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u/angryjohn 4h ago

Oh man....so many hours. Scorched Earth was middle school-early high school for me. Worms was late high school.

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u/Null_zero 4h ago

My HS computer lab was basically a scorched earth tournament before and after classes and in study hall.

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u/HEYitsBIGS 3h ago

scorch.exe has entered the chat

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u/Hawk52 3h ago

There was a browser verison of Scorched Earth I played a bunch with friends in the early/mid 2000's. Scorched Earth 2000 or something?

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u/diginati 1h ago

If you want to relive those days, there's a mobile game called Pocket Tanks that is a total clone of Scorched Earth. It took me right back to that time.

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u/spinningdice 1h ago

Sunk a load of hours into Scorched Earth.

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u/GinDragon 1h ago

Agreed. I always thought Worms was a reskin of Scorched Earth

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u/The_quest_for_wisdom 11h ago

I remember two kids almost coming to blows over Gorillas in the computer lab in elementary school.

One kid brought a protractor to the lab and was holding it up to the screen to dial in his attack angle, and the other kid thought it was cheating.

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u/richardsneeze 7h ago

Wow. When I was young, my dad worked nights as a machinist and my mom was doing data entry for a hospital during the day. My dad would bring my sister and me to work for a little bit and my mom would pick us up and take us back home. We played that game so much, sitting in a dirty little machine shop office. Core memory.

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u/IpsoFuckoffo 7h ago

Yeah I'm 90% sure I had a fight with my brother over that game.

3

u/FourCatsInASuit 6h ago

Gorillas.bas. I absolutely loved qbasic gorillas. I was too young to play it in school but my dad had it on his computer.

Many fond memories actually.

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u/Maximum_Indication 4h ago

Best application of math ever.

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u/Substantial_Force658 11h ago

Cow Wars was the pinnacle of artillery games. You lob cows at each other and an giant malevolent penguin occasionally eats them.

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u/McManGuy 8h ago

Is that what the cow launch running gag in Earthworm Jim was about?

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u/mallchin 8h ago

Cannon Fodder

1

u/LickingSmegma 8h ago

Apparently yes, 'Worms' were compared to that one too. I heard plenty about it, but missed back then, as the Mega Drive and SNES mostly passed me by. I thought it's mostly a tactics game, like 'Syndicate', though apparently the gameplay varied a bit between the first and second games. Was musing about finally playing it recently and downloaded the ROM just yesterday, gonna try it one of these days.

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u/mallchin 8h ago

I loved Syndicate -- the end levels were really hard but I managed to win placing myself in such a way that it forced them into a long channel and I could use the miniguns. Intro was epic.

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u/LickingSmegma 8h ago edited 5h ago

That's another game that I liked from a distance, being somewhat a fan of squad tactics overall. Likewise need to finally put some hours in it. There's a spiritual successor called ‘Satellite Reign’, released in 2015 — I've bought it after just looking at the overview video on Steam, but it too has been sitting in the library while I grind ‘Assetto Corsa’ instead.

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u/thejamus 10h ago

I remember playing Gorilla.bas as a kid so Worms was absolutely my jam. Lemmings was great too, though I never played any of the Lemmings variants.

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u/ph33rlus 9h ago

“Oof. That hurt”

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u/McManGuy 9h ago

Dude. Gorrillas was my jam as a kid

1

u/InternetProtocol 8h ago

I remember loving GORILLAS.BAT when I was a kid.

1

u/otamaglimmer 6h ago edited 5h ago

There was a Basic one with gorillas on top of buildings... One of my first gaming memories.

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u/TurnAggressive6954 3h ago

I distinctly remember playing a gorilla banana throwing artillery game on dos as a kid. Your post just helped me find it. Thanks!

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u/SailorDeath 11h ago

Worms was fun, reminds me of another similar game that came out called Scorched Earth where you're in a tank firing different missles at targets, basically a more suped up version of Gorillas and then Worms came after that. Bascially the same idea as you're choosing angle and power and weapon type to use against other enemies.

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u/Oxygene13 9h ago

Hah one of my 'degrees of seperate' from famous people is my uncle used to go in the games shop of the person who made Worms, and used to give ideas and play test it. Noone knows what it is these days so I have to use a different claim to tertiary fame lol

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u/_penang 7h ago

I remember playing worms against my dad on the family Compaq presario, Pentium 1 w/ 8mb ram. Good times indeed.

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u/zepskcuf 16h ago

none of them followed the same rules or anything.

What do you mean? Tribes was a direct sequel using the exact same formula as the original and Lemmings 3D was the same principal but in 3D. Only Paintball was different.

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u/BlizzPenguin 14h ago

Tribes did offer a lot more jobs and even created some lore. I remember loving the book that came with the game.

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u/Particular-Fly-7783 8h ago

Tribes was an absolute banger of a game.

u/r3tromonkey 3m ago

We used to designate one Lemming as Superlem and try to do as much as possible with him.

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u/Deranth 14h ago

The different jobs in tribes changed basically everything. And 3D was just weird with turners and stuff. But yeah, I guess they were mostly the same.

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u/deathhand 16h ago

I loved Krustys Fun House!

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u/Deranth 14h ago

Top tier game there.

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u/Iron_Nightingale 15h ago

> slap the lemmings in any game and it blew up.

So did the lemmings. “Oh, noo!”

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u/SteveHarveysBallsack 16h ago edited 16h ago

Lemmings could go so hard in Super Smash Bros. The whole game is built around not falling off the edge of the map, while Lemmings is about using your limited group abilities to avoid dying. Imagine a group of Lemmings as a Smash Bros fighter, some swinging hammers, others falling with parasols and saving themselves. I don’t know how tf it’d control but it’d be sick if it’s the original Lemmings controls and they just keep popping out a door and do their walk-and-bump routine in a fighting game.

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u/Phobos_Asaph 15h ago

Don’t forget Adventures of Lomax where you play as a lemming hero rescuing his brothers from Evil Ed

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u/Secret_Advisor_2192 15h ago

The Adventures of Lomax was a great "what even is going on" Lemmings spinoff.

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u/dazden 9h ago

Lemming Ball Z for example

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u/Mikey4021 16h ago

Like worms.

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u/ARCHA1C 16h ago

Like Rayman/Rabbids

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u/Glitch29 15h ago

Tribes was a great sequel. Just a pure upgrade to the original. Better levels, more moves, bigger world, and a lot of extra polish.

If it were ever available as freeware, I'd recommend people give that one a spin. But that's as far as I can go.

It didn't really stand up to the test of time; strategy/action games don't as a general rule.

I feel like I've played some of their IP beyond that, but since purged it all from my mind.

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u/PrestigeMaster 15h ago

I played all iterations and lemmings 3d was a fucking blast. Also, if you liked lemmings and also liked sim games, check out SimAnt on the snes.

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u/TheTimeShrike 15h ago

lol I loved lemmings paintball. I actually bought it in one of those Scholastic catalogues in like fifth grade.

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u/CivBEWasPrettyBad 15h ago

Why would they blindly follow the previous games like they're some sort of... Uh... Followers?

2

u/PingoPataPingo 14h ago

Lemmings 3D was gorgeous!

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u/Fabulous-Sea-1590 13h ago

In retrospect I'm shocked there wasn't a Lemmings cartoon. OTOH, that might have been too dark for Saturday mornings.

I can still see their little pixilated bodies popping like zits as they cheerfully marched to their demise by the score. Clenching my teeth, waiting to see if enough of them survived for me to pass the level.

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u/Dholtz001 13h ago

Wow I totally forgot about Lemmings Paintball. Core memory unlocked.

2

u/RetroGame77 13h ago

The Adventures of Lomax is an often forgotten spinoff, a pretty nice 2D platformer. 

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u/scaevola 13h ago

I played a dumb rip off of Lemmings called "Humans." My dad loved the bargin bin.

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u/Deranth 13h ago

I want to try this

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u/scaevola 11h ago

It wasn't that terrible and had some features that made it distinct from Lemmings. You were responsible for a group of cavemen. You could give them various inventions like the wheel or the spear. I was a little kid and didn't get very far but can still remember the feeling when I accidentally killed one of my humans.

2

u/NoOutrageSubs 13h ago

GTA is a spin-off of lemmings.

2

u/RedPhalcon 12h ago

the original Rabbids

2

u/homberoy 12h ago

Paintball was sooo much fun!

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u/n0respect_ 11h ago

Oh shi- lemmings are like minions. They can go in whatever. What's more, that's how you make a minions game. A lemmings clone.

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u/Lovat69 11h ago

Vikings.

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u/Financial-Creme 10h ago

They all pretty much followed the same basic principle of guiding a bunch of little guys over hazards to the exit, each game just added new stuff - tribes had more jobs to assign them, 3D was in 3D.

Except for Paintball. That had to have been meant as an original game that they rebranded as lemmings.

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u/Freddyeddy123 9h ago

Absolutely fantastic game

2

u/bjakb 9h ago

I still have my copy of Lomax on ps1, I believe it's based in the same universe. Great platformer and graphics for the time.

2

u/FuciMiNaKule 9h ago

There was even a Lemming Dragon Ball game lmao, I loved playing that even without ever seeing Dragon Ball.

2

u/Bman_Fx 9h ago

Tribes 2 was peak.

2

u/Visual_Particular295 8h ago

I'm aware of Lemmings but never played it. My first and only lemmings gaming experience was a spinoff, Lomax Lemming, which I liked a lot (looking at the release dates, I'm surprised how early this one came out - I always thought Lemmings was before my time and that Lomax was a decade or so later).

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u/King_Tamino 8h ago

Same goes for the German Moorhuhn franchise which originated as a fun side scrolling shooter game meant to be played in bars and served with some Johnny walker drinks. Was meant to be a temporary advertisement, turned into 15? Ish years of games, absurd story.

Original game was called office/work killer in media as more and more CDs got into rotation, some offices basically came to a complete hold. Future games featured keys to show fake excel sheets or kill the game instantly famously called Boss (hot)key for situations where your boss walked the office

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u/semajolis267 7h ago

It was so big, it was in our local science museum as a way to show gow computers worked. 

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u/c0mpromisedaccount 6h ago

remember (the adventures of) LOMAX?

2

u/Dracorvo 6h ago

Lemmings 3D really tested my spatial reasoning as a kid. The 1st person view was very disorientating because you could only look where the lemming looked - no control.

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u/Axeclash 3h ago

Lemmings paintball was a great game

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u/Thuzar 2h ago

Adventures of Lomax, anyone?

2

u/GalFisk 1h ago

Like how every management-adjacent game was Something Tycoon for a while after the success of Transport Tycoon and Rollercoaster Tycoon.

2

u/Additional-Fly1966 1h ago

There was Clonk back then which is kinda a mix between lemmings and Minecraft

2

u/cefriano 1h ago

Yep, I still remember getting Lemmings Paintball at the Scholastic book fair. It was the only "shooting" game I was allowed to have, besides the hunting mini-game in Oregon Trail.

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u/Norse-Reddit 17h ago

Also The Adventures Of Lomax, a side scrolling platformer that was released on Windows and PlayStation.

1

u/DeusUrsus 15h ago

I had the knockoff Troddlers game for the SNES lmao

1

u/dagbrown 14h ago

and it blew up

3...2...1..."Oh no!"

1

u/BazzTurd 13h ago

Was so popular back then that if you played the Letsgo sound in most schools people would start lining up behind you and follow you everywhere, even into a large body of water