Lemmings — save a percentage of them Runs here
1991 · Psygnosis · System 7 · Mini vMac (Mac II) · 640×480 at 8-bit colour
Guide updated September 2026
Small green-haired creatures walk out of a trapdoor and keep walking until something stops them, and what stops them is usually fatal. You cannot control them. You can only give a few of them jobs — dig, build, block, climb — and hope the arrangement gets enough of the rest to the exit.
This is the Macintosh version, in colour, with all the levels and the music.
Boots straight to the Lemmings title screen on an emulated Macintosh II. Click LETS GO! to start, or NEW LEVEL to pick a difficulty.
Controls
| Mouse | Select a skill from the bar, then click a lemming to assign it |
| Skill bar | Climber, floater, bomber, blocker, builder, basher, miner, digger |
| Pause button | Stop the clock and think, which you will need |
| Nuke button | Blow them all up and start again — click it twice |
| Cmd-Q | Quit to the Finder |
DMA Design created Lemmings and Psygnosis published it; both ended up inside Sony, which has re-released Lemmings on its own platforms. Those are new software. The 1991 Macintosh port has not been sold in over thirty years. Full reasoning is in notices/lemmings.md, and the takedown promise applies without argument.
Archives
- Internet Archive — the preserved Macintosh disk this copy came from.
- Macintosh Garden — other releases and documentation.
How it works & what to expect
| Machine | Macintosh II, 640×480 colour |
|---|---|
| System | System 7.5.3 |
| Emulator | Mini vMac, compiled to WebAssembly |
| Version | The Macintosh release |
| Saves | Level codes and progress inside the emulated Mac, in your browser. |
Each level gives you a fixed number of each skill, a time limit, and a percentage you have to save. The lemmings walk, turn at walls, fall, and die if the fall is too far. Everything else is you.
The difficulty tiers — Fun, Tricky, Taxing, Mayhem — are not a gentle curve. Fun teaches you the skills; Mayhem assumes you have internalised them and starts removing the ones you want.
The eight jobs, and what they are really for
Blocker stops everyone walking past, which is how you buy time. It also strands that lemming permanently unless you bomb him.
Builder lays a short staircase. Almost every level is really a question about where to put staircases.
Basher tunnels horizontally, miner diagonally down, digger straight down. Picking the wrong one of the three is the most common way to ruin a level.
Climber and floater are permanent upgrades to one lemming rather than actions — give them early to the one who will lead.
Bomber kills a lemming after five seconds and blows a hole in whatever he is standing on. It is both a demolition tool and the only way to undo a blocker.
Where it came from
Lemmings started as a throwaway experiment at DMA Design in Dundee: Mike Dailly drew a tiny sprite to see how small a recognisable walking character could be, and it turned out to be about eight pixels tall. Someone said you could make a game out of a lot of those, and Russell Kay said something to the effect that it would take about a year — which it did.
It sold in enormous numbers on the Amiga and was ported to nearly everything with a screen. DMA Design later became Rockstar North and made Grand Theft Auto, which is a fairly wide arc from small green creatures walking off cliffs.
The design idea that made it work is that you never control a lemming directly. You alter the environment and the rules, and the population does what populations do. It is closer to SimCity than to a platform game, dressed up as slapstick.
Questions people ask
Is this the original Lemmings?
It is the Macintosh port, in colour, with the full level set. The Amiga version came first and is the one usually shown in screenshots.
How do I assign a skill?
Click the skill in the bar at the bottom, then click the lemming you want to do it. The number above each skill is how many you have left.
What are the difficulty tiers?
Fun, Tricky, Taxing and Mayhem. Fun teaches the skills; Mayhem assumes you know them and takes away the ones you would rather use.
How do I get rid of a blocker?
Make him a bomber. It is the only way, it kills him, and the hole he leaves is often the point.
What is the nuke button?
It blows up every lemming on the level. Click it twice to confirm. It is how you concede.
Is progress saved?
Inside the emulated Mac, in your own browser. It survives closing the tab but not clearing site data.
