Merry Christmas everyone! When I chose Wednesday to be my soundtrack post day it hadn’t occurred to me that it would coincide with Christmas. That left me with a choice – either post on a different day or post something appropriately festive. Having already used Big Giant Christmas EP back in snowy August I now present the greatest Christmas game ever made: Christmas Lemmings.
The original Lemmings was released in 1991 by Psygnosis. Note how easy that was to say. Concise, informative and to the point. Christmas Lemmings will take a little longer to explain. That same year, Psygnosis released Xmas Lemmings as a four-level demo, two of which were Christmas-themed, two taken from the 1991 expansion Oh No More Lemmings. In 1992 it was released once more, again as a four-level demo, this time all Christmas-themed. In 1993 the full game was released as Christmas Lemmings (UK) and Holiday Lemmings (US). This version had two difficulty ratings of 16 levels each. In 1994 the full full game was released, with an additional two difficulty ratings for a total of 64 levels, each with a two-player version.
To complicate matters further, Xmas/Christmas/Holiday Lemmings was released for Amiga, PC, Macintosh and OS/2. Lost count yet? No? Good. Because it gets better. The 1993 version was re-released as a free version, having been replaced by the 1994 iteration, and then a four-level mini version (not a demo, no) was released as a promo for the latest two versions. Eventually, like all early Lemmings games, it was ported to essentially every platform ever made.
But enough of this. May your day be brightened with early-nineties MIDI carols and the memory of hundreds of lemmings wearing Santa costumes.