Lemmings turns DMA into a household name
A back-room argument over a few animated pixels becomes one of the best-selling puzzle games ever made
Quick facts
- Developer
- DMA Design
- Publisher
- Psygnosis
- Original platform
- Commodore Amiga (later ported widely)
- Amiga release
- 14 February 1991
- Programming
- Dave Jones, Mike Dailly, Russell Kay
- Animation
- Gary Timmons, Scott Johnston, Mike Dailly
- Sparked by
- Scott Johnston's animations for the shelved game Walker
- Sales
- Over 20 million copies by 2011 (all platforms)
- Also in
- Commodore's Cartoon Classics Amiga bundle
What happened
Lemmings grew out of a game that never shipped. While DMA was building Walker, which starred a single large, heavily animated character, artist Scott Johnston animated small men to attack it, and the team's argument over those tiny figures is remembered inside the studio as the moment that sparked Lemmings and its famous walking animation. The idea that emerged was a crowd of small green-haired creatures that march mindlessly into danger while the player assigns them skills, digger, builder, blocker, climber, and the memorable bomber, to steer enough of them to the exit. Dave Jones led the Amiga version with Mike Dailly and Russell Kay, Gary Timmons and Johnston handled animation, and Dailly built a front-end screen filled with hundreds of individually animating lemmings; Jones modeled the on-screen explosion on the classic Williams arcade game Defender. Psygnosis published it, and it became a phenomenon, later folded into Commodore's Cartoon Classics Amiga bundle and ported to dozens of systems.
Why it matters
Lemmings put Dundee on the world map and made DMA a real business. It sold in the millions, funded the studio's growth, and gave Jones, Dailly, and the team the experience and reputation they would later carry into Grand Theft Auto. Before GTA, this was the biggest thing to come out of the studio, and it remains one of the defining puzzle games of its era.
How we know
The origin comes from Mike Dailly's first-hand studio history, which also records the exact release date: "Lemmings finally got released on the 14th of February 1991." The V&A confirms Lemmings was designed by DMA Design, published by Psygnosis in 1991, and sold over fifteen million copies; the peer-reviewed Business History Review records over two million copies by 1993 and over twenty million by 2011.
Sources
- V&A Dundee. Scottish Design Icons: Lemmings (V&A Dundee) · Reputable sourcevam.ac.uk · The domain "vam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry.
- Denise Tsang. Innovation in the British Video Game Industry since 1978 (Business History Review 95) (2021) · Peer-reviewedcambridge.org · Cited as a "journal" source (no stronger domain match).
- Mike Dailly. The Complete History of DMA Design, Chapter 3 (first-hand, archived) · Reputable sourceweb.archive.org · The domain "web.archive.org" is on our Reputable source registry.
- Mike Dailly. The Complete History of DMA Design, Chapter 2 Part 4 (the origin argument, archived) · Reputable sourceweb.archive.org · The domain "web.archive.org" is on our Reputable source registry.
- Mike Dailly. The Complete History of DMA Design, Chapter 4 Part 1 (launch day, first-hand, archived) · Reputable sourceweb.archive.org · The domain "web.archive.org" is on our Reputable source registry.
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