The Complete History of Lemmings, By Mike Dailly
Here’s a long look at the implementation and inception of the original Amiga version of Lemmings, written by one of the fellows who worked on it, Mike Dailly.
The level editor was built around the Deluxe Paint interface; a program everyone at DMA was very familiar with. It was incredibly easy to use, and being built directly into the game it allowed for a very quick turn around on level creation.Gary, myself and Scot were the ones that did the bulk of the levels, But Dave did manage to sneek a couple in as well; although it was probably because he told us too and we couldn’t really argue with him.
Having said that, it did take him ages to get any that were even worth while considering! He used to try and beat us, and after proudly stabbing a finger at the screen and saying “There! Beat that!”, we’d calmly point out a totally new way of getting around all his traps, and doing it in a much simpler method. “Oh…”, he’d mutter, and scramble off to try and fix it.
It’s also full of pictures that show off the game’s glorious art. It really doesn’t get any better than that Lemming walk cycle by Mike and Gary Timmons. To this day, it’s still a 7×10 masterpiece of pixel art.