Part 1 of my LP of Lemmings Chronicles. Finally back to do another LP after quite an extensive break. This time, I’ve chosen to LP Lemmings Chronicles, aka, All New World of Lemmings (for those outside of North America, which is what the former is known by in NA), or informally L3. This is one of two official Lemmings games that I haven’t played (the other being Lemmings Paintball). Despite controls being unresponsive being the huge negative, I’m actually really excited to get into the game. I did a few practice runs offline and while it might seem to have a lot to take in because of the many tools available, it actually doesn’t take too long to get the hang of the game.
I am playing and recording my LP on Dosbox-SVN, which was recommended to me by Ste Woz Ere because it has save-stating, especially if playing their custom L3 pack. Some of the later levels of the tribes would be far less frustrating as a result. This would had been nice to know before I did my L2 playthrough,as it would had saved me so much frustration, especially on Sports 10! Oh well, what’s done is done, and it’s way too late for that now :p
I’m playing the CD version of L3, and hence with CD music. I want to give a shoutout to @jkapp76 for helping troubleshoot the issue of the intro movie flickering. He reported it as a bug to the Dosbox-Staging Github, found a video by a user where it doesn’t have the flickering issue, and asked them what they did to get the game working. They said they were using v1.53 of the CD version of L3. Jeremy later posted a working portable copy of L3, and I have verified that the intro movie has no flickering issues. After some testing, there was one major gripe I had, which was the music playing two seconds after the entrances open on the levels. Yes, I know I didn’t have to bother with this and look around for another download online that doesn’t have the music pause at the start, but it was noticeable enough to bug me :p In any case, huge thanks to Jeremy for getting this sorted out, and again I’m sorry if it took time away from his grandfather duties.
I’m playing v1.48, and indeed the version of the CD doesn’t seem to matter in regards to the video flickering. Instead, what seems to matter is that the music tracks are on the bin/cue file and that one must mount the CD game image on a CD drive, not a local directory of the hard drive.
The goal of guiding Lemmings to the exit in the level is the same as in previous titles of the series. Every level starts with 20 Lemmings, though only 10 will spawn from the entrance at a time. Some levels have straggler Lemmings, which is essentially the equivalent of pre-placed Lemmings in NL, which if you rescue them then they will be added to the total amount of Lemmings. If you lose one, more will spawn from the entrance. This keeps going until you lose all Lemmings, and when that happens you fail the tribe. I don’t actually know if this is true, since I’ve never seen what happens in this case.
Just like L2, you only need to save one Lemming to go to the next level. The amount you save is the amount that carries over to the next level. What confuses me is if you save all the Lemmings, then on the post-results screen it says you save 20, when only 10 were rescued. I guess the other 10 are considered “saved” since they are in reserve and only spawn from the entrance to replace any Lemmings you lose in the level.
L3 nevertheless is a very different game from L1/L2 in that there’s plenty of new mechanics. Every level has the same 5 skills: Walker, Blocker, Jumper, Use Tool, and Drop Tool. The first three can be used an unlimited number of times, while the tools have a limited amount of usages. Most have 8 instances per tool pickup. The tools is what are used to solve most levels, since there’s not much you can do with just using the Walker, Blocker, and Jumper skills.
One huge difference is that Lemmings can no longer past under staircase bridges from the other side, whereas in L1/L2 they could do so with no issues.
There are also enemies that wander around on some levels that will kill your Lemmings. They can be dispatched with the Hadoken tool, and I think same with the bomber and grenade tools.
Not sure why “fall apart terrain” isn’t mentioned anywhere, not even in the manual!
In this video, I play and complete the first 10 levels of the Shadow tribe. Didn’t make use of save-stating, though I probably will in the rest of the series from here on out. I also show off the practice level and explain how things work before diving into the main LP of the game.
Enjoy and hopefully the LP will be entertaining seeing me play L3 for the very first time! ;)
0:00 – Introduction
15:55 – Practice Level
28:07 – Shadow 1
32:25 – Shadow 2
36:11 – Shadow 3
38:34 – Shadow 4
46:25 – Shadow 5
49:01 – Shadow 6
52:54 – Shadow 7
59:28 – Shadow 8
1:03:01 – Shadow 9
1:09:37 – Shadow 10
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