The first and last game I ever played on a Macintosh was Lemmings. As a result, my experience as a Macintosh gamer was addictive, fun and all too short-lived. Sounds like most Mac gamers, doesn’t it? Well, Lemmings also happened to be one of the few games my wife enjoyed playing with me, so to see the classic game disappear meant a little piece of our gaming relationship disappeared with it. All that is changing with Lemmings on the PSP.
To hear Sony tell it, Lemmings on PSP is a faithful, modern-day translation of the classic game, with upgraded graphics and sound. And amazingly, what Sony would have you believe is entirely true. The lemmings look the same, but in higher resolution and detail. The basic concept of each level is the same, with later stages requiring the use of bashers, parachuters, bridge-builders and miners. Heck, even the certain level of panic is the same as you scramble to solve the logistical puzzles in each level and rescue the required number of lemmings. It’s just that the entire game has an extra level of polish.
Take, for example, the audio. The original Lemmings had one basic song that got stuck in your head like chewing gum in a six-year-old’s hair. For the PSP update, the music differs with each core level, from an almost techno-sounding chord in one level to a more Arabian Nights-like soundtrack in the next. The music may not be quite as catchy as the original, but it’s infinitely clearer and cleaner and much less annoying. That’s a good thing.
The moments before a level begins are also a nice upgrade, as you can evaluate a nice thumbnail/overview of the entire level to plan your building and digging strategy before the lemmings start to fall from the sky. Once the level begins, selecting the various tools is as easy as navigating the menu with the shoulder buttons, and when you need to select a specific lemming for a specific duty, you can press the triangle button to zoom-in and get a close-up view of the action. Selecting individual lemmings can still be a bit trying, especially compared to the precision of a mouse in the original game, but the zoom function definitely helps.
Yet the most significant upgrade is easily the inclusion of a level editor. Using a handy set of tools in the Infrastructure mode, you can create a custom level, determine its appropriate solution and then even share it with friends (and download your friends’ levels) via the PSP’s WiFi ad-hoc connectivity. That in itself should cause a few far-flung Lemmings fans to lose their minds.
When it releases this May, Lemmings for PSP will have more than 150 levels, a level creator, upgraded graphics and non-repetitive music. And somehow the charm will still remain. The preview build we played was both a blast from the past and a lesson in how to bring old games to new audiences. If the game’s development progresses as it has so far, there’s no reason any self-respecting Lemmings fan with a PSP would not want to own this game.
–Jonas Allen
