Lemmings (PSP)

[Dogg Thang]

Well I bought this today. First a quick rant - I brought my PSP with me because I knew I'd have a fairly lengthy bus journey today. So I got Lemmings and was really looking forward to it. But no. I couldn't play it because my firmware was 2.5 and it wanted me to upgrade to 2.6. So I couldn't play it until I got home. Now that may just be a minor inconvenience but when I get a game I bloody well want to be able to play it. I genuinely don't care about Sony's reason for firmware upgrades - this is the first system where I can't play the game straight out of the box. That is wrong and I hate them for it.

So, that aside, this conversion of Lemmings seems to be a nice conversion. It certainly looks lovely - the graphics are splendid. The control works nicely. The old music favourites seem to be gone which is unfortunate and what replaces it is more ambient type stuff. Not bad by any means but not as Lemmingy as the old stuff.

I went straight to the new levels and, as it turns out, so far they are pretty much the same as the old ones. Maybe you can play too much Lemmings. I'm hoping that it will get much more gripping when the harder levels kick in but so far this is not hooking me in the way the game did back in the day. I know things got a bit fancy with Lemmings 2 but maybe it's time to bring some of those fancy concepts back? Maybe a Lemmings 2 conversion would have been a better idea? I don't know.

Haven't tried the level editor yet. I'll let you know about that when I get to it.

The only other thing to mention at this point is a hideous flashing battery indicator in the top right. Maybe there is a way to turn this off but I haven't found it yet.

[Kubrick]

So I couldn't play it until I got home.

Doesn't the game disc have the firmware upgrade included on it?

[Dogg Thang]

Yes but you have to be connected to a power supply.

[AllYourBase]

And they force you to accept it? Urrgh handhelds shouldn't be like that!!

[Kubrick]

Yeah, you're forced to. I had to upgrade mine to v2.6 for Initial D but it only took a few minutes and I didn't need to be connected to a power supply.

Isn't that just Sony covering their ass incase the battery runs out halfway through the process?

Anyway, back to Lemmings...I quite liked it on the Amiga back in the day, but was never a HUGE fan of it and really wasn't very good at it either. I dunno if I would like that sort of game nowadays.

[Concept]

Cheers for the impressions. Doesn't sound enough to make a purchase worthwhile.

[Darwock]

I thought you just had to have full battery, you don't necessarily have to be on mains?

[VR46]

no, sure you need to have a mains/car adaptor connected to upgrade firmware.

If you really enjoyed the Amiga version you will love this very good conversion, but guess lot of people here were too young to appreciate it first time around in what 1991 ?

[mazza]

I thought you just had to have full battery, you don't necessarily have to be on mains?

You're right. I got my copy yesterday and was on the move while booting it up for the first time. Luckily for me I had a full battery and it installed 2.60 right away. Would've been quite angry had it not let me play the game though.

The game looks lovely so far and I have reached some quite difficult levels. The level editor could keep you occupied for hours and I can't wait till people start sharing their home made levels.

Has anyone seen a full review anywhere?

[wicky]

If you really enjoyed the Amiga version you will love this very good conversion, but guess lot of people here were too young to appreciate it first time around in what 1991 ?

I loved the amiga version, but i don't know if i could get away with it on a dpad rather than a mouse?

[Dogg Thang]

To be honest, I think the controls are great. Now maybe I'm not the right person to ask as I had no problem with the old console versions of Lemmings but the PSP controls seem tuned to exactly the right amount of sensitivity and it takes no time at all to get used to them.

[Darwock]

I started on a d-pad back in the day, with the CDi version. That also included the 'play while paused' feature that this was said to have.

[Ish]

I used to play Lemmings on the Archimedes. Never got on with it on the consoles. I really think it needs a mouse.

[DJ_Mike]

I can confirm that you DON'T need to be connected to the mains to do a firmware upgrade - it's just that you need enough battery power so the PSP thinks it's "safe" to do a firmware upgrade.

Don't forget, the PS2 is no different, except that the firmware updates took place in the background (to my knowledge) when you purchased certain accessories or software - for instance the DVD remote - and there were fewer of them, of course

[Strider]

To be honest, I think this is a fantastic conversion. The original game never required quick deft movements, and anyone who' has played the SNES version will know that Lemmings can work fine on a pad.

It really is a great little game.