Lemmings

Lemmings on Super NES is Sunsoft's console conversion of DMA Design's 1991 Amiga puzzle game, released in Japan in December 1991 and in North America in March 1992. Psygnosis originated and licensed the property; the North American manual identifies the game as published under license from Psygnosis and credits Sunsoft. Rather than directly commanding a hero, the player shepherds a stream of tiny, single-minded creatures from a trap door to an exit. They walk until a wall turns them around, and the course is filled with drops, water, traps, barriers, and terrain that must be reshaped before enough of the group can be saved.

Each stage sets a time limit, a release rate, a population, and a required rescue percentage. The player has a finite stock of assignments, so a solution is as much about conserving tools as finding a route. The eight skills are Climber, Floater, Bomber, Blocker, Builder, Basher, Miner, and Digger. Climbers scale vertical surfaces and Floaters survive long drops for the rest of the level; a Bomber counts down and opens a hole at the cost of that Lemming. Blockers turn the marching crowd, Builders lay a short rising staircase, Bashers tunnel horizontally, Miners dig diagonally, and Diggers bore straight down. Metal cannot be removed, so recognizing what terrain is permanent is part of the puzzle.

The game is controlled with the Super NES pad rather than the original's mouse. The directional pad moves the cursor and can scroll the view; holding B increases cursor speed, while the shoulder buttons scroll left or right and can speed scrolling when used with B. X and Y move the selection along the skill icons. With the cursor, A selects an icon, applies the chosen assignment to a Lemming, changes the release rate, or jumps the view to a position on the level map. Start pauses the action, which is useful because the lemmings and timer normally continue in real time, and Select plus Start restarts a level. The interface also includes a double-A emergency command on the bomb icon to clear a failed attempt quickly.

Single-player contains 125 stages. The familiar 120 are arranged as 30 levels each in Fun, Tricky, Taxing, and Mayhem, rising from demonstrations of basic jobs to tight resource and timing problems. Sunsoft added five difficult bonus stages, presented as the Sunsoft Bonus Five, making this edition larger than the core four-rating set. Completing a stage yields a password for returning later, and previously cleared stages can be selected from their title screens. The cartridge also offers a sound test through the title-screen options.

A separate two-player mode supplies 20 competitive levels. The display is split so each player can pan a personal view of the same level, with one side directing blue Lemmings and the other green ones. Each color has its own exit, but guiding an opponent's Lemmings through your own exit can turn their march into your advantage. The players cannot operate one another's cursor or workers. Saved Lemmings carry forward to augment the next level's starting group, up to 80 per side, and both players can jointly end a stalemate by converting the center bars to the shared bomb command.

Sunsoft kept much of the Amiga game's structure, visual themes, and crossover material drawn from other Psygnosis games, a notable strength beside more heavily reduced console adaptations. One exception is Tricky 21: the Amiga level known as "All the 6's" was changed for the SNES into "Ohayo Lemming-san," with a different layout spelling a Japanese greeting in hiragana. The port also substitutes "Paradise" for references to "Heaven." Its music uses the same broad selection of tunes but is newly arranged for Super NES audio hardware.

The SNES version differs from several other ports in scale and features. The NES release omits levels and sharply limits the number of Lemmings active on screen, while the Genesis edition replaces some original puzzles and adds two full extra ratings. This Super NES release instead preserves the main single-player progression, adds only the five Sunsoft bonuses, and retains competitive play. The D-pad cursor cannot match the immediate precision of a mouse, particularly on small targets or fast assignments, but pause, adjustable cursor speed, shoulder-button scrolling, and the level map make a sprawling stage manageable from a controller.

Lemmings is therefore a puzzle game built around indirect control, crowd management, and improvised engineering. A single carefully chosen worker may climb ahead, carve a safe route, and release a crowd held behind a Blocker; a mistimed command can waste a scarce skill or send everyone into a trap. The Super NES edition preserves that tension while packaging it for a home console with passwords, split-screen competition, and its own final set of challenges.