The Only Known Prototype Lemmings Arcade in The World!
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- Опубликовано: 20 май 2024
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Today we look at the only known Lemmings arcade PCB in existence. Does it work and is it any good? Let's find out.
#videogames #gaming #lemmings
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● Episode Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Lemmings
04:44 Who are PCBWay.com
05:09 Mike Dailly on the Lemmings PCB
07:50 Open The Case!
09:05 Looking over the Lemmings arcade PCB
11:22 Playing Lemmings Prototype
15:47 What should we do with this?
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When he spoke about 1999 it all seemed not so long ago until I realised that's now a quarter of a century ago. Damn, I'm getting old!
Lol I was born around that time, and I graduated college.
@@siveon298 Enjoy it while you can. After college, life goes into 2x mode. Right now, you might not remember your family home having a different couch. Pretty soon, you'll be thinking, "They don't make these things like they used to. I just replaced it ... uh ... oh god. That was 20 years ago."
Y2k
The nineties seems like 10 years ago.
Best decade in my life.
I think it’s because of being young and have no responsibilities, all the time in the world to do whatever you want.
And then starting to get a proper job and getting a ton of money to burn. 💰 🔥
Yes the year before the world ends with Y2K!
Nice to hear FM Synthesis chip versions of my music in the arcade version 😄
@CoLD.SToRAGE you are one of my electronic music inspirations. I loved Lemmings on my old PC, and your work on Wipeout❤
The A600 "surprise" bundle I got for Christmas had Lemmings included - every time I hear any of the music in any other context it reminds me of playing 😁
The BEST part of the Amiga version of this game that NONE of the ports had was the function keys the Amiga had. Each choice instantly active with a press of the corresponding function key… perfect.
Every computer had those, Archimedes was better
@@John-ot1lx yes, but NONE of the consoles did…
The Amiga version felt much better to play because of the hardware mouse polling. Buttery smooth.
So now we know what was in the pulp fiction brief case.
This is wonderful! I’ve known Mike has this for a long time but had never seen it. I had a popular Lemmings fan site 20 years ago (it’s still up, but not maintained). This arcade board is one of those legendary bits of Lemmings lore, and it would be so cool to have it in an arcade cabinet and playable by visitors.
Crazy to think it's into it's 4th decade and it's still in the public mind. Best thing to come out of Dundee along with marmalade and cake :)
I made so many friends on college back in 1991, by just leaving my dorm room door open.... while I played Lemmings on an Amiga-500. People would walk by and ask, whats that? and I would start up 2-player mode. Hooked instantly. It was the perfect balance of puzzle solving, but still fast paced.
Arcades went away for a while but now they're back again.
That thing belongs in a museum! Oh wait…you have a museum? That’s lucky, guess it’s in the right place already 👍
it is in mame and has been for an long time
Not sure how I'd approach designing an arcade around this board. But if I was designing a Lemmings arcade from scratch, I'd have all the lemming abilities as individual buttons, and a flip cover toggle switch to arm the nuke. Not that anyone would really want to waste their money with the nuke I guess!
The nuke was not just for giving up on a level, but to also clear the screen of any lemmings that have been assigned static roles, such as blockers.
If they were to remain, the level wouldn't end.
@@ondrejsedlak4935 Good point, I'd totally forgotten about that!
@@ondrejsedlak4935 The level would end when the time ran out, you would then win or loose depending on the parameters of the level.
I absolutely love the idea of the individual buttons for the different capabilities..
That would be a lot of buttons, if you had one for every ability! Especially when you consider it was intended to be a 2 player game in the arcade.
I would love to see this story develop. It would be great to see this board eventually housed in an actual cabinet with trackballs and with nicely designed side art, bezel and control panel. Watching this one with real interest!
Lemmings will always have a place in my heart - such a wonderfully simple idea delivered perfectly. Mike and the team at DMA were legends. I spent far too much time, when I should have been working on my PhD, playing the game - and Lemmings two player was the most brutal fun I think I've ever had on a computer.
But it *CAN'T* be 33 years ago surely??? That would mean I'm getting old!
On an off chance - does anyone know the brand of those stylish headphones Mike was wearing?
Given how rare it is, I think the safest option would be a cabinet with a mister set up with only the various ports available on it nothing else, with the board displayed as a unique artifact. However, the cabinet should have the ability to use the original board in limited occourences to preserve it from damage over time.
Good shout, I'm in full agreement. You best me to it, as I was gonna say the exact
same thing.
New Arcade cab, running Mister, using trackballs.
Perhaps have a cut-out, on the side of the cab, displaying the PCB.
Beat me to it. Definitely emulation for the cabinet, and showing off the board in a museum display. I wonder if the ROMs could be patched to make it a more complete game, or change the logic, e.g. to allow for bonus time if you save additional Lemmings (e.g. +1 second for each lemming saved).
A waste..Use it till it dies....After all just having it on display and not using it (and not knowing it still works) is stupid. Use it till it dies and then display it. Just like the morons showing working vintage vehicles and not using them (Jay Leno is a hero..he knows what to do).
I'm so going to enjoy this series! Please keep us posted on progress on this project!!
I played 2 player Lemmings on the SNES with my friend. He hated that I would send a lemming back to dig through his path causing him to lose :)
As always, a fantastic piece covering my favourite niche of retro gaming- prototype arcade games...thanks again! :)
Awesome! I think the arcade cabinet should reflect the colors on the box the game came in. Black with that amazing Psygnosis logo. And of course that big, beautiful green lemmings logo.
Loved this vid! My first home version of Lemmings was also one of my earliest game purchases on CD, the PC Engine version. Still own it as I do the PC Engines official mouse which I got purely for Lemmings! So many memories! Personally think an arcade version at the time wouldn't pull in the coins, but the fact this exists is amazing and deserves special care. Perhaps keep the original board on display though despite how fitting it would be to have it in an active cab. Can't wait for next vid on this project. Keep up the amazing work you all do at the cave❤
I played the Megadrive version the most back in the 90s, i really think a 2 player arcade cabinet could work, especially with trackballs. And some lovely Lemmings art obviously 😎
Awesome video, I would definitely visit the cave if this was available to play. Such a nostalgic gem!
I always know when RMC posts a video it's going to be amazing
I'm complete opposite, I think random episodes look meh, and then end up bangers.
Wonderful video. Thanks to all
How I would design an arcade Lemmings board. Simply make the game cost 50c and 25c to continue. If you save all the Lemmings or maybe 90% (adjustable value by operator), you can continue to the next level for free. BTW, that prototype Lemmings arcade board is priceless!
Fascinating. Another mind blowing rarity for the cave!
I feel like this should use a trackball.
If you watched the video, you will know that there were originally two trackballs used.
I had the honour of being schooled by Neil in a 2 player game of lemmings a few years ago. 😂. Hi Neil from Irata.
Haha hello mate. No mercy!
@@RMCRetro Ha Ha. You should hang that sign above the door.
Putting it out there... Acorn Archimedes version is the best port
Have you ever typed in the password section 'IAMNOTGOOD'?
the difference with the Amiga version is barely noticeable and it came a year later IIRC, same for the Sharp x68000 version
the Sharp is the most powerful of the three platforms circa 1988-1993 except for maybe the very high end Amigas (3000 and 4000 series) that were extremely expensive and barely anyone had except for "multimedia professionals"
this really didn't matter much for a game like Lemmings that was essentially just as playable in any of the three platforms and visually almost the same (I never saw the Atari ST version but save for the sound it should be pretty similar too)
Great find, can't wait to see it on the museum!
@13:40 If you hold down shift in Lemmings & Oh No More Lemming on the Mac, it speeds up. If you got System 7, make sure that you deactivate the Shift lock extension, or it'll always be sped up.
PS If you set the Lemmings drop speed to 88, it looks like they're walking backwards when you press shift.
Yes, that speed up feature was added to Lemmings Mac port because someone in the UK went on Holiday and it had to be finished. The person who finished it added that feature and it was then adopted later, nothing to do with the Arcade version or Lemmings 2.
Very fond memories of Lemmings, one of my favorite games on MS-DOS and that 5/5 star kind of perfect game for sure.
If you do run the Original Board maybe you can design the cabinet to have a window to see the board.
Brilliance, thank you for this piece of gaming nostalgia
I remember lemmings multiplayer with two mice on Amiga 500. I'm not sure if this was Amiga 500 specific or if any of the ports have the feature.
As a modern twist to this it would be fun to see even a tech demo on how traditional lemmings would play with regular amount of lemmings but each lemming would be controlled by an individual player.
Lemmings 2 had also this feature needing only 1 lemming to survive the level, needless to say on one early level I lost all but one lemming but managed to grind through to the very last level with just one, but therein the game got me, that level required at least two lemmings for the puzzle... The level designer had me there.
Can't wait to see the cab!
Fantastic to see the arcade board!
As Neil opened up the box displaying the PCB within, I said in a louder than normal voice, "It's beautiful...." Made me think of Raiders of the Ark at the end of the movie when the Ark is opened and René Belloq yells out, "It's Beautiful!" LOL 😆
and fittingly - this belongs in a museum!
@@Hellwyck at least packaged in a wooden box, in a massive warehouse, never to be opened and never seen ever again!?
The pixels will eerily burn a pattern on the casing.
@@sptaaffe1977 But We have top men working on it right now.
I have my copy in its box, and the manual has all the level codes from my completing the game on all experience levels… freaking loved the game back in 92
Loved this on the amiga❤
I can’t wait to see what comes of this!
Ahhh the Lemmings music at the end of the video! My favourite track was always Origins and Lemmings Level 14 on the Amiga - think it was the same on the MegaDrive. Basically Little Town of Bethlehem but in a funky remix 🤣
I absolutely love the music! Most tracks are traditional and classical tunes but some appear to have been written specifically for the game.
Is there a video of the Computer Space project? I didn’t see it in your list of videos, though I still subscribed. 😁
The speedup is also in the PC version. I remember playing the game a lot back in the 90s.
Perhaps the windows one? The original msdos didn't have it. It did appear in Lemmings 2...
@freeculture Yes, the Windows 95 version added the fast forward button that was not present in the DOS version.
Mike Dailly is a treasure 🤩
Pfft.... I'm not that expensive.
@@MikeDaillyPriceless though 🤩
I still have my Game Gear copy of Lemmings. It’s probably the game I put the most hours into in total.
I must have spent days staring at that tiny screen trying to solve those levels!
I loved that version. I even discovered a cheat which I sent in to Mean Machines Sega, and they printed it :)
Just about to buy a GG so thanks for the recommendation
I discovered an entirely hidden game in my Micro Machines cartridge for my Game Gear called Squinky Tennis, but you need another Game Gear, another copy of Micro Machines, and the really rare link cable. 30+ years on I still haven't found anyone with that.
@@althejazzman No way, that's so cool! I had Micro Machines too, great game, played it avidly. Yeah multiplayer gaming in those days was complicated and expensive.
Definitely needs those trackballs 🎉I would put the board in a glass cabinet to preserve it and emulate the game somehow. Also have you seen there are now ROM hacks that fix the Mega Drive version of the game, fixes colour palettes, PAL version, level names etc. You could give them a go and somehow make them work with the Mega Tech which could sit beside it 😀👍
2:54 - Yes, I have played Lemmings multiplayer - my friend and I both had a Game Gear and a copy of Lemmings. I bought the "Gear to Gear" link cable and we played it together, oh I dunno, twice maybe? Hah! I still have my GG in the attic, no doubt it needs major TLC. I do still have the link cable as well, which I believe is getting rare these days.
Still got my original Lemmings mug 😀 , Think it cost £5.99 and could only get it through buying the game like "card in box" , Must be rare now can't be to many Lemmings mugs still out there .. My mug is A+ condition as well can deff tell its been looked after .. Also have a Lemmings II Tribes mug also in A+ condition ..
Awesome project!
Mike Daily is such a nice guy. have followed him over the years and he is just amazing...
Who is this "Mike Daily" you speak of? I'll need to take a hit out on him..... git.😋
Never could get a handle of the original, loved playing the recent version for mobile, which separates the screen into squares where you select actions for. Think the upcoming arcade machine needs some fancy graphics for the sides of the cabinet.
18:41 One of my favorite games on my Amiga was done by TTR Development. Called Thromulus.
I do need to visit the museum sometime, get to see some of my old floppy discs mounted in the wall, pointing out my handwriting.
Also, need to ask if you were ever able to access the data on the HDD of my old Amiga 4000!
you forgot the Master System version in the console mentions, still got my copy to this day
The Master System version impresses me. Despite the harsh limitations of the console, the game functions and plays really well.
I heard rumours about the arcade board! Nice that The Cave have it 😃
How about putting the board in a usual Cabinetcase, but on the front, where the coin thingy is, put a proper plexiglas window in, and some lights and present the Board also.
So it would not be hidden behind some metal or wood, it would be visible for all the guests and players.
Dont 3d print the arcade. Design it and take the cad files to a shop that has a cnc wood machine.
Your friend from the Arcade museum knows people that have those machines and Im sure they can make the arcade like an original arcade made with plywood. He even knows a guy that works with "stickers", stencil. He could print the graphics to stick over the plywood.
In this instance it would be a wooden cabinet with perhaps some 3D printed features, such as a lemmings head, just something playful and not the whole cab. In keeping with Data East cabs of the era
Be a great Trash to Lemmings.
I loved that game, played it on the LYNX for hours… Didn‘t know it existed on the 8bit Ataris! (I sometimes thought about programming a clone in the QUICK programming language (that a friend of mine and me developed for the 8bit Atari), which was perfect for game development).
Fun fact. Lemmings on the Mac was the first game I ever hacked. The copyright protection was just too annoying. I never distribute it though. Just for my own pleasure.
*LOVE* Lemmings, I still play the original occasionally on my A500 or occasionally an emulator at lunch in work.
Sooo where's the Nuke Button hiding?
I've played the prototype on a MAME simulator. It's just the Amiga version, and after you play a bit, you need to add in a new quarter. I'm not surprised it didn't make it to market.
I loved this game!!
Groundbreaking game when it landed - i remember it well. Was so different from ANYTHING else at that time
So true
I remember seeing Lemmings on my friend's Wang PC and I was immediately taken by it. So obviously I took a copy and played it so much.
I remember suggesting that you play Lemmings 2 player on a Christmas live stream you did years ago Neil, which I seem to remember was the first time you'd come across that mode 😄
Hmmm I’m pretty sure I had this and The Settlers on rotation back in the day with two mice, with a caveat that I am old
Another interesting video . I remember seeing a small article about the arcade game early nineties after the success of the home versions. Looks very similar to the amiga original. Not sure how popular the arcade version would be as u say the skill was not rewarded as u would just have to put more coins In
What a beautiful piece of gaming history...
Love this
I remember playing this on the BBC micro in first school, we were allowed to play it during class if we got a good grade on our class work
They used torn up 3.5" disk labels to cover the eproms :D
Yes!
@@RMCRetro (That was probably me...)
Lemmings is only meant to be played on Acorn computers.
Fight me.
Wonderful retro memories
So, you could say that Lemmings was the Crysis of its time?
Nice historical piece and still working! Great! Seems like the game was designed for homecomputer from the getgo and was simply ported over to cheap arcade hardware. The Lack of typical arcade machine rewards (lives, free games, bonus screens for good percentage...) would have had to be solved I think, and maybe that's the reason it never got beyond this prototype. The Arcade rush was already over back then, as more and more people could afford their own similar capeable homecomputer, and this game would have needed a huge reprogramming to work in an Arcade environment. I was a kid back then, and this game had stunning graphics, animations and game machanics.
Artifact issues can happen due to under or over voltage. 4.8v maybe to little 4.95 maybe just right on the +5v pot adjustment on the psu. Done it so many times on neogeo mvs. 👍🏼
Eh, not likely. Typical tolerance ranges for TTL logic chip supply voltages are 5V ±5% in standard parts or ±10% in military-spec parts, corresponding to 4.75-5.25V and 4.5-5.5V respectively. And the actual threshold voltages for proper logic level detection are much lower. In TTL, 0-0.8V is a low, 2V and up a high. In CMOS, the thresholds are just a percentage of the supply voltage (0-30%=low, 70-100%=high), so not particularly sensitive to supply variation, provided everything is powered from the same supply.
I bought my A500 purely on the basis that I wanted this game. Best decision ever. Thousands of hours on this and Pinball Dreams went by ❤!
Wow, the Lynx version looks pretty good! Also, thinking about the code, I wonder if the data structure used to store all the little guys is called linked-lemming-list.
It didn't come out for the Dragon 32 or the TRS-80 Color Computer 1,2 or 3. What a shame.
It belongs in a museum! As this thing is a prototype with loads of botch-wires and hotglue I'd rather have it behind glass than in an arcade cabinet - sooner or later it will release the magical blue smoke and then there will be none. Nonetheless it should be played - albeit in emulation.
I was just playing that game on my arcade cabinet last night lol, it was the first time playing it
I wish the extra wires seen on the pcb were not referred to as 'botch wires', as this makes it sound poor. It's a prototype, as such likely only the first or early pcb, as such you would expect to see this kind of thing. E.g. even after release, some manufacturers put these on after finding a later issue, e.g. Williams Defender. On the video you mention doing something about it, I would highly recommend they are left as is, for likely they fix an issue with the 'next version' of the pcb to address it.
As for preservation, would be best to keep the pcb in a box for display, as in my experience as an arcade collector & restorer and electronics repairer, it would likely experience more failures over time, and bad if it is the surface mount chips (not sure if any customs are present). Lovely to see it was saved (sadly many prototypes have been lost/binned) and shared with the wider community. 🙂
I think it's a term mainly used by people that have never designed a circuit with over 50 ICs, nor designed the multi-layer PCBs for them (hope I'm not offending anyone). When I was designing complex hardware in the 80s and 90s (but not for game applications) they were "patch wires", and therefore the hardware equivalent of software patches.
Isn't it "bodge wires"?
@@GodmanchesterGoblinboth patch wire or bodge wire are equivalent. It's just down to where people are from. Nothing to do with whether they have designed anything comple
@phill6859 I'm sure you're right. The terms will be completely interchangeable to many people. But one term is less derogatory than the other if you have worked on such hardware and are also sensitive to the way the English language is sometimes misused. And yes, that's me, and something that I am very much aware of - hence my remark about hopefully not causing offence.
Played this in Mame a little and honestly I enjoyed it 👍. Until this video, I always thought that this was a legit arcade conversion of this game, I mean, that somewhere in the world this arcade machine was a real thing...
Naoki's next project: A cabinet for the lemmings board...
Looks like a videso ram issue.... also.. I've got for the Robocop style Dataeast cab. Loved the curved marquee of their cabs of the era..
Lemmings as an arcade game? The thought never occurred to me
I had it on Amiga as a kid, but I got to play the Genesis version on a Nomad once which was neat.
Adrian Powell, the guy who did the box art is still about, so perhaps you could ask him to do the banners and side art?
That sounds like a great idea!
I remember when I was little in the 90's and I got a Demo CD called 119games it contained lemmings
I had never heard of Lemmings until I installed the Excalibur classic Mac emulator on my PC. It came with a version of the game and I was hooked. I was recently given a RISC OS version. So back to wasting time.... I mean work.
I have fond ish memories of playing this on my grandparents Sega mega drive on summer breaks in Scotland.
Fast forward is also on the Mac version - along with the definitive Lemmings graphics!
Never seen Lemmings on the Lynx before. Always remember seeing it for sale at Special Reserve but too expensive at 30 pounds when all other games were sold cheap, including the Lynx itself which only cost 29.99.
spent many many hours playing Lemmings computer version went through all levels and all versions..second favorite from the time was Marble Madness 2 player.. in the arcade it was Gauntlet
Re your 68000 lacking a mouse. There’s a kit on pcbway to convert to use a standard PS/2 mouse. There’s also currently an authentic mouse available on eBay for about $200 USD
I still have my Lemmings cartridge for my original gameboy, now that deffinately is a challenge on the original non backlit display.
Very interesting. On a related note, I have heard rumours of a Parsol Stars arcade prototype, has anyone else heard of that?
Also for The MSX2 computer was made an Lemmings game.
I never had the original game but the Demo of a Amiga magazine in a floppy disk. You had a lot of software as demos to see if you liked the game. Or simple utilities that can be useful to play with. The Demo was so big with many levels i did not need the full game that i nearly got. It would take me forever. I never completed all the demo levels. it was one of those games that you played sometimes but not a addictive game.
Probably a bad RAM somewhere. Although in my experience, those Toshiba TMM2018 usually go nuclear when they fail - they heat up considerably and just don't work at all. But I bet the bitmap memory uses chips with more than 2k capacity... likely DRAM.
I usually short data lines on RAM chips that look like they belong to video RAMs to ground to see if lines pop up in the layer that has the glitches so I know I'm in the right spot or totally wrong. Then I jump known working ICs over the suspect ones. And if I can't get clear results from that and can be sure it's the RAM and not a BUS transceiver or glue logic (here I am because the lines have breaks in them where there are a few bits in the defective chip that are still working), I just remove them all and socket them.