You have to wonder about evolution sometimes, don't you? I mean, all that stuff with the gorillas and Piltdown Man and stuff is all very well, but the whole concept of 'survival of the fittest' has to come into question when you realise that after all these millions of years, we've still got lemmings on the planet. Here's a species of beings that apparently spend most of their lives trying to hurl themselves off cliffs, yet they still somehow manage to appear by the million every year. Where do they come from? Maybe it's UFOs - maybe all those flying saucers drunk people always see on winter nights aren't on reconnaissance trips from alien civilisations at all, maybe they're all full of consignments of lemmings from another planet, getting dropped off in Norway under cover of darkness...

Or maybe all that 'hurling yourself off a cliff' palaver is just a cunning bluff - maybe a gang of undercover SAS-type lemmings go to the bottoms of all the cliffs the night before the Big Drop and cunningly replace all the rocks and jagged bits of cliff face with foam rubber replicas, then when the other lems chuck themselves off the top they land so soft squishy safe stuff, then just pretend they're dead in order to fool predators and that kind of thing. And of course, afterwards, they'd be in an ideal 'lots of little fluffy cuties wedged together in a gigantic throbbing heap' position for lots of, er, procreation, to make sure the species was preserved for another year...

Or maybe it's all just one giant prank by Jeremy Beadle, but one thing's for sure (And it's that if you don't get on with the bleedin' review, you're fired - Andy), and that's that old John's been a bit on the tight side when it comes to this game (for the full details, and anything useful you might have actually wanted to know about the game itself, check out his Mega Drive review on page 99 - no point in telling you it all twice, was there?) On the Master System, this looks almost as good as the original Amiga game did, and more importantly it plays absolutely perfectly. The levels are as brain-teasingly brilliant as they always were, the Master joypad does a surprisingly workable job of replacing the original mouse control, and you even get some handy new bits, like the big icon that shows you what the lemming currently under the cursor is designated at (extremely useful if you're not to good at keeping track of 25 identical characters six pixels high). Basically, Lemmings might not look like much on the Mega Drive, but if you've got a Master System you're going to have to go a long way to find a game that'll give you better value for your money than this.

SOUND 7

ADDICTION 9

BRAINPOWER 10

UPPY STUFF

Surprisingly clear graphics

Vast challenge

Easy to pick up

Passwords for every level

Eases you in gently

Nothing else like it

Really cute speech

Really stretches your brain

...and your reactions

DOWNY STUFF

No two-player mode

SEGA POWER SAYS:

A gorgeously original puzzle game that'll last you longer than just about any other Master System game ever - don't miss it.

89%