History VideoGame / Lemmings

-->''Superb! You read every trope on this page. Can you do it again....?''

Originally developed for the Commodore UsefulNotes/{{Amiga}}, ''Lemmings'' is one of those games that has, like ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'', [[http://everylemming.blogspot.com/2007/12/lemmings.html been ported to virtually every console and platform in existence]]. New games were inevitable, and include:

* ''Climber'' -- Lemmings with the climber skill will climb up any vertical wall in their path, rather than turning around. One of the two persistent skills that lasts the entire level.
* ''Floater'' -- These lemmings possess an umbrella which allows them to fall any distance without splatting. One of the two persistent skills that lasts the entire level.
** Applying both of the above would lead to the character being called ''Athlete''.
* ''Bomber'' -- After a five-second countdown, the bomber explodes, taking out nearby walls and obstacles. Naturally, the lemming doesn't survive the process. Called the ''Exploder'' in some ports and in ''Lemmings 2: The Tribes'' (where ''Bomber'' is a different skill entirely).

* ''Basher'' -- The basher punches through walls, creating a horizontal tunnel through an obstacle until it hits air or a steel wall (or it's told to do something else).
* ''Miner'' -- Armed with a miner's pick, the miner digs a hole diagonally downward through solid dirt.
* ''Digger'' -- Similar to the above two, only the digger employs its claws to dig straight down.

* {{Feelies}}: ''Lemmings 2'' (the Amiga version at least) included a prologue in the form of an honest-to-god, colour-illustrated [[http://lemnet.tripod.com/english-chronicles/info/books/index.html children's book]] about the somewhat inept Jimmy B. [=McLemming=]'s mission to warn the other tribes to bring their talismans. [=McLemming's=] exploits continued in the manual for the sequel, ''Lemmings Chronicles'', before [[AbortedArc the entire storyline was dropped from the franchise.]]

* LohengrinAndMeneelssohn: One track, titled "Twang", is a mashup of the ''Lohengrin'' snippet and "Ten Green Bottles".

* FakeDifficulty: The [[LuckBasedMission randomness]] that arises from trying to assign a skill to a lemming out of a large group moving in opposite directions. Bashing through the wrong wall, for example, could easily send the entire group plummeting to their doom.

[[quoteright:256:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lemmings.png]]
[[caption-width-right:256:So many lemmings, so little time...]]

->''"'''WARNING:''' We are not responsible for:\\
Loss of sanity\\
Loss of hair\\
Loss of sleep''"
-->-- '''box cover'''

* SirenSong: The Lemme Fatale enemy in Lemmings Chronicles drives Lemmings who get near her to suicide with her singing

* SurpriseCreepy: Those cute little fellas can bite it in some very nasty and/or bloody ways. There's also the stage "MENACING!!" in the original game, which stands out rather drastically in its aesthetics by featuring demonic-looking skeletons and skulls tangled up in ropy strands of gore (it's an homage to a previous ShootEmUp game called ''Menace'', made by the same developers).

** In the vanilla version, this makes a slight appearance in that some of the later Tricky levels are harder than the early Taxing levels.
** The Taxing level "Take a running jump..." is far easier than most Tricky levels if one knows how. The "official" solution (as featured in most walkthroughs) is to sacrifice the leading lemming to plug the tiny gap at the right, thereby preventing the rest from climbing onto a ledge and falling from there to their deaths; but it's much easier to build a landing ramp going under the ledge, which makes the drop non-fatal and incidentally makes it possible to save all lemmings, rather than all but one.

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

* IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels: "Fun", "Tricky", "Taxing" and "Mayhem".

* MythologyGag: The 2018 mobile game has several references to ''Lemmings 2'', such as having collectable tribes, and Jimmy McLemming's name appearing as a selectable name to use in the tournaments.
** Lomax is also referenced in said tournament.
%%* NintendoHard

* SequelDifficultySpike: ''Oh No! More Lemmings''. The "Tame" difficulty would more aptly have been called "Lame", since those levels are just a simple stroll from start to exit and you can't kill any lemmings unless you go out of your way to do so, but the "Crazy" levels which follow are roughly equivalent to "Taxing" in the original.

** ''Lemmings 3D'' attempted to address this by adding an additional level between these two: if it's a height big enough that they shouldn't walk out completely unscathed, but not big enough to kill them outright, the lemmings will fall down unconscious on impact and remain like this for a few seconds before getting up and continuing as normal.

* ''Lemmings Revolution'' returned to 2-D gameplay, but with 3-D graphics, as the levels were wrapped around a cylinder. Featured two groups of colour-coded Lemmings a a time, each with different entry and exit points and able to pass over different obstacles.

** ''Lemmings 2: The Tribes'': In most versions of the game, the Space Tribe has a rendition of "Blue Danube" as its background music, in reference to ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey''.

* AntiFrustrationFeatures: The Java-based clone ''Lemmini'' contains several, including a fast-forward button, the ability to assign tasks while the game is paused, a replay feature that repeats the previous performance and allows the player to take over right before the point where they messed up before, and arrow key shortcuts that highlight only walkers or Lemmings walking in a certain direction. Not only does it make some levels in the original games ''much'' easier by mitigating the PixelHunt aspect mentioned below, it also makes possible custom levels requiring a degree of precision that would have been downright unfair in older versions of the game.\\
\\
The more recent clone ''[=NeoLemmix=]'' takes this even further, with the importation of the Highlight Lemming feature from ''Lemmings 3D'' (allowing the player to mark a single Lemming from a mob first and then directly assign skills to it by just clicking on the skill bar), overlays showing a Lemming's hypothetical precise path or Bomber area of effect when hovering over it with a skill selected and the ability to manually advance gameplay frame-by-frame, and even rewind gameplay to correct mistakes - and custom level creators have, accordingly, made levels that are completely impractical without such features.

* EnthrallingSiren: The Lemme Fatale in ''Chronicles'', with deadly results.