Lomax: Let’s go!

By winter 1996 I’d kind of had enough of Lemmings. DMA Design’s Amiga-born puzzle game, as well as its expansion and first sequel, were some of the biggest and most unavoidable successes in the entire hobby. They were on just about everything. Everything. Mega Drive. Game Boy. 3DO. FM Towns. Sam Coupé. The original was also about five years old by that point in time, and numerous attempts in the intervening years to update and expand the series beyond the original’s winning formula had been tepidly received at best: it’s no wonder I not only completely missed out on platforming spinoff Lomax‘s debut, but also didn’t spare it so much as a second thought afterwards. I really wish I had. This PlayStation/PC platformer sits neatly alongside the likes of Sega’s Astal as an ambitiously new take on an old genre. The shading and detail found in every aspect of the pixel art, from the ground beneath Lomax’s feet to distant castles, foreground dandelion seeds, and leaky boats that only show up…