Lemmings (Sega Master System, Game Gear)

A surprisingly competent port, this game works some 8-bit black magic by generating new sprites on the fly.⁷

Level Select#

As one of the Lemmings pulls the Sega logo onto the screen, hold 1+2 and press Left, Right, Up, Down, Left, Right. A sound will confirm correct entry. At the main menu, choose a difficulty level, then choose NEW GAME to go to the level select screen (which also features a few hidden developer credits) for the selected difficulty level. Press Left/Right to toggle to level to play and 2 to select it. Finally, choose 1 PLAYER at the main menu to go to the selected stage.

Master System	Game Gear

Level patches#

Several levels are patched after loading.⁸ Sometimes this is for small modifications for when levels are repeated with a harder difficulty, but a significant edit is done to the level "All The 6's", which has the top part of the level blanked and the name changed to "Sixes Not!". This level was also censored in other ports.

Unused art#

Artwork	Name	Description
	2 Player option	There is artwork in the ROM to allow the player to choose between 1 Player and 2 Player, but no two-player mode exists in the code.
	Level exits	The level exits mostly share a common set of animations for flames. These overwrite artwork in the underlying tile set. Even where the artwork is a close match, the art is slightly different. The upper half is the data in the tileset; the lower half is what you see in-game.
	Water	The same applies to the animated water; it is also different in the underlying tileset before animation is applied. The upper half is the data in the tileset; the lower half is what you see in-game.
	One-way blocks	There is data in the ROM for animated arrows on one-way blocks, but it is not used in-game.
	Flame	The data in the ROM has six frames of animation but the game skips the last one.
	Skill icons	The HUD shows the skills of the lemming under the cursor; two unused images for falling and drowning lemmings are unused.

References#