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The Lemmings are little critters with big green mops on their heads and groovy blue jackets. They'd be a peaceful, fun loving kind if it wasn't for one problem - they haven't got a brain cell between them! (Do these people work at CRASH? - Ed). To make matters worse they've found themselves in a heap of trouble and need to be rescued.

Each level of the game has traps, high cliffs, deep holes and all sorts of other hazards for the chaps to avoid as well as an entrance and exit. When the Lemmings start coming out of the entrance, they keep going until they hit a wall (as you do!) and turn around, come to the end of a rock and fall to their doom, or you select one of the icons to give a Lemming a special job to do.

The trick is to get the required amount of Lemmings to the exit within the time limit using only the icons you have at your disposal. Icons get less and less the further you progress into the 60 levels of the game, split into four categories - Fun, Tricky, Taxing and Mayhem. You are going to need some quick thinking and lightning reactions to rescue all the little Lemmings.

The idea behind this game is so sickeningly simple it had programmers all over the world kicking themselves for not thinking of it first. The sprites used are tiny so need little attention to detail, the programmer's skill is used by thinking up devilishly difficult levels for the unsuspecting games player. The graphics are almost exactly the same as the Amiga or Atari ST's. The only difference seems to be that all the colour has been taken out of them, the whole game's in monochrome. This doesn't spoil things too much though, except that when the Lemmings crowd together all you can see is a block of colour! The more characters on screen the slower the game gets too, but that's nothing to moan about - it's a miracle the game is running on a Spectrum in the first place!

You're not going to complete Lemmings in a hurry. There are four skill levels: Fun, Tricky, Taxing and Mayhem and each of these has 15 landscapes to complete. That makes (whirr, whirr) 60 levels of Lemming mayhem in all! 128K owners don't have to reload levels if they fail to complete them, 48K owners do.

Lemmings is an excellent conversion of a highly popular 16-bit game. It may have a couple of problems in the speed and colour departments but I can live with these. This is one game that I am going to be addicted to for a long time.

NICK ... 91%

'Oh to be a Lemming! They don't have to worry about mortgage rates and house prices. Oh no, all they care about is finding themselves a cliff to spectacularly chuck themselves off. Trying to stop the little swines following their natural instincts in this game is frustrating but fun. They are such morons - IQs of three below a rocking horse! Fortunately, if they annoy you too much you can just press the nuke button and blast the bleedin' blighters to smithereens! (I wonder if you can buy a button like that for real life?) Graphically, Lemmings is superb, although the sprites and backgrounds are monochrome so the Lemmings sometimes get lost in the scenery. Also the cursor used to control the suicidal creatures is sometimes rather sluggish as you try desperately to avert disaster. Lemmings is an absolutely stonkin' game so if brain teasers are your cup of tea, go out and buy it - now!'