Harekiet wrote:

pc lemmings uses only 16 colors, with 16 colors coming from the 262144 colors of the vga if you select the vga version.
Got it with my soundblaster 2.0 together with indy car racing, kinda stupid since both games only use the opl2 chip of the soundblaster and not the digital sound capabilities 😀

I got those two games with my SB 2.0 as well 😁 Lemmings was on a white 720K 3.5" copy-protected disk, which meant I couldn't play it for a long time because I originally had a 286 with only 5.25" drives (I had to send a letter to Creative to even get 5.25" driver disks for the sound card)... My brother and I played the crap out of the Indy 500 game (Electronic Arts I believe).

I never realized that they didn't show off the features of the card well - that's a good point. I think that happens a lot with bundled software even today though... Probably has more to do with companies trying to sell hardware on the popularity of the games than with showing it off.

Originally posted by Nicht Sehr Gut
I figured as such. 16-Color VGA always struck me as odd. Other than for the sake of convience, why would you use it? You would still need a VGA monitor to replace the EGA model (anybody here remember EGA monitors?).

Well I think that with EGA you had at most maybe 64 colours to choose from to map to each of the 16 that could be on the screen at once. With 16-colour VGA you had a lot more (as Harekiet mentioned). Also, VGA was probably better for things like scrolling (not sure though). I seem to remember trying both the EGA and VGA versions of Lemmings and the VGA version was noticably better (but just barely)

I used to have an EGA monitor and video card in my 286, but someone set a printer on top of it and it overheated. We had to use a Hercules monochrome setup for a couple of years (anyone remember SIMCGA? 🤣) until my dad broke down and got an SVGA card (hello Moraff!).

Originally posted by Nicht Sehr Gut
BTW, does anyone know if the intro animation with the air balloon was on any of the PC versions? My floppy and CD versions didn't have it (bizarre..as it easily fit onto the Amiga floppy version).

I'm not sure I've seen it but I'm almost positive that it's not in the DOS floppy version. The DOS version was on a 720KB floppy - how big was the Amiga floppy version?

Originally posted by HunterZ Well I think that with EGA you had at most maybe 64 colours to choose from to map to each of the 16 that could be on the screen at once. With 16-colour VGA you had a lot more (as Harekiet mentioned).

Obviously, but why not go ahead and use the 256 color mode? Even if they had only used the 32 colors in the original it would would've been better looking and (AFAIK) the same people who could play the 16-color VGA version could play a 256-color version.

Also, VGA was probably better for things like scrolling (not sure though).

I vaguely remember Jeff Minter (of Llamasoft fame) grumbling about VGA when it came out. He was (of course) thrilled at the prospect at having 256 simultaneous colors to play with but he was quite bitter about how VGA (originally) wasn't really designed for speed. Kept grumbling about how all the work for scrolling and sprite manipulation was completely up to the programmer (yet he had a greater affection for the Atari ST than the Amiga...which I always thought was weird).

I seem to remember trying both the EGA and VGA versions of Lemmings and the VGA version was noticably better (but just barely)

Ooo...a paradox. *heh* EGA is tolerable. It's only different in terms of the color palette. Having said that, 16-color VGA is always preferable to EGA.

anyone remember SIMCGA?

*gah* CGA...an assault on the human eye.

I'm not sure I've seen it but I'm almost positive that it's not in the DOS floppy version. The DOS version was on a 720KB floppy - how big was the Amiga floppy version?

Well the Amiga game was on two floppies (most of the first disk is the intro), but they're about 800-880K (depending on the filesystem used). The way I remember it, PC had already accepted the 1.44 MB floppy as standard by then... hrmmm... memories...

I've never seen that animation in any of the PC versions.

That website misses one version:
There was a prototype arcade version licensed from Psygnosis and published by Data East on Data East arcade hardware. Naturally, this was only a prototype, never officially released - but somehow collectors got ahold of it, and not too long ago it found its way into the hands of MAME developers.

Websites:
http://emustatus.rainemu.com/protos/games/lemmings.htm
http://www.mame.dk/gameinfo/lemmings/
http://caesar.logiqx.com/html/emus/multi/mame/lemmings.shtml

Given the hardware, it's more or less a port of the Amiga/Atari version(s). But there might be some gameplay differences, I've never known anyone who checked.

Signed,
you-know-who

Nicht Sehr Gut wrote:

Obviously, but why not go ahead and use the 256 color mode? Even if they had only used the 32 colors in the original it would would've been better looking and (AFAIK) the same people who could play the 16-color VGA version could play a 256-color version.

The answer to that is easy: you can't get 256 colors at that resolution without VESA, which would have been a huge pain in the neck both on the programming and user-support ends of things. They'd have had to lower the res to like 320x200 (or 240), thus making it worse than the EGA version.

I vaguely remember Jeff Minter (of Llamasoft fame) grumbling about VGA when it came out.
[...]
(yet he had a greater affection for the Atari ST than the Amiga...which I always thought was weird).

Sounds like someone to take with a grain of salt. He probably had a sentimental attachment to the ST, like you do with the Amiga 😜

*gah* CGA...an assault on the human eye.

It's worse than that. SIMCGA is what I used to play CGA games on my monochrome setup. Amber. Dithered amber.

Well the Amiga game was on two floppies (most of the first disk is the intro), but they're about 800-880K (depending on the filesystem used). The way I remember it, PC had already accepted the 1.44 MB floppy as standard by then... hrmmm... memories...

Well there's your answer then. I'm positive that the PC version I had came on a single white or grey 720KB 3.5" floppy, so they had no room to put it on there even if they had wanted to.

Originally posted by Unregistered I've never seen that animation in any of the PC versions.

So this is a case of the PC people getting hosed instead of the Amiga people. A rarity.

That website misses one version:
There was a prototype arcade version licensed from Psygnosis and published by Data East on Data East arcade hardware.

I completely forget about that one. Now I remember the licensing deal announcement, etc... Funny thing is, it's basically a "Deluxe Amiga" version, right down to the 14MHz 68000 CPU. I imagine the "pause and think" aspect of the game is what killed the arcade version. Arcade games in general want action, action, action...

Given the hardware, it's more or less a port of the Amiga/Atari version(s). But there might be some gameplay differences, I've never known anyone who checked.

Well, there's no pause feature (expected, since that would allowed for even a reasonably skilled player to play for hours...), the intro is a variation of the balloon intro on the original, the buttons are animated (IE: the "Digger" on the button continually digs), the font used in the game is reminiscent of the bog-standard (plain, drab, etc...) used in arcade games from the early 80's, and the 1st level is an exact copy of the original. Probably a major portion of the game is cloned because, as you said, it was just a prototype.

Signed,
you-know-who

A "slender dagger with a blade thick in proportion to its breadth" perhaps?

Originally posted by HunterZ The answer to that is easy: you can't get 256 colors at that resolution without VESA,
which would have been a huge pain in the neck both on the programming and user-support ends of things. They'd have had to lower the res to like 320x200 (or 240), thus making it worse than the EGA version.

Err...Hunter...it is 320x200 resolution. Hi-res option wasn't available until "Lemmings 2".

Sounds like someone to take with a grain of salt. He probably had a sentimental attachment to the ST, like you do with the Amiga

Ooo...a double-affront. Well, firstly, Jeff Minter is THE "weird-beyond-comprehension-but absolutely-overflowing-with-action-game" guy.
http://www.llamasoft.co.uk/

He was like a lot of European programmers, able to squeeze out out every last drop of performance out of the hardware (although many had the side-effect of trashing the OS in the process...a definite no-no, especially for the PC).

As for Amiga sentiment, let's call it "profoundly substantiated support for a machine that was years before it's time, never truly used to it's full capacity, and in some ways still more pleasant to work with than a Windows PC" sentiment.

It's worse than that. SIMCGA is what I used to play CGA games on my monochrome setup. Amber. Dithered amber.

I don't know. Amber or green, while not pleasant, didn't use the putrid palette of CGA. Having said that, trying to play any game on a monochrome screen (that didn't have specific monochrome support) would be an experience in water torture.

I'm positive that the PC version I had came on a single white or grey 720KB 3.5" floppy, so they had no room to put it on there even if they had wanted to.

Confirmed. My floppy version is a 720k disk (never even noticed the "missing hole"). Looks like PC people were short-changed due to the support for the AMSTRAD PC1640 or PC1512 (popular in Europe at the time, IIRC). They couldn't handle a 1.44 drive, only 360k-5.25 or 720k-3.5 floppy.