Man, the soundtrack of the original Lemmings is indelibly etched into my brain -- cheery MIDI tracks of everything from classical music to folk tunes.

So many parallels with Angry Birds.

Appeals to all groups, released on every platform. Then come the sequels, special editions (like Christmas Lemmings), and then it just kind of faded away.

Lemmings just didn't get a movie and merchandising.

> For a while there in the early 1990s, there seemed to be good reason to believe that Lemmings was on its way to becoming one of gaming’s perennial franchises. Developed by DMA Design of Dundee, Scotland, the original Lemmings game took the world by storm upon its release in 1991

DMA Design later created the GTA series and was rebranded Rockstar North when they were acquired by Take-Two. So they did end up creating a giant franchise (though "perennial" could certainly be debated given the gap between GTA 5 and GTA 6).

In any case the principles involved have probably been too busy sleeping on mountains of GTA 1-6 money to lament the untimely death of Lemmings too much.

That said, as a gamer I personally prefer Lemmings.

oh noooooooo!