I have recently given some thought to making a TAS of Lemmings for the NES. There are several factors, however, that may not make the TAS very interesting. For example, there are 100 levels in the game, 25 for each level of difficulty. As far as I can tell, the levels are all different, but I haven't played them all. It could easily become boring to watch the little things do basically the same actions for 100 levels. Furthermore, the actual lemmings are only 8 pixels tall with the default settings of FCEU (blip), so there's not that much to actually see of them.
As far as speed goes, the menu system is apparently set up in such a way that you can only switch jobs every 8 frames. If you miss the frame on which you can switch jobs, you have to wait for the next one. I've tried to speed this up by pressing other buttons in between and then trying to switch, but it still works only every 8 frames. When viewed at full speed, this still appears somewhat fast, but it won't have an "instant" look like some other games.
One thing that might make this interesting is the fact that switching between jobs causes different pitches of sound to be played, so the player could make some music while waiting for the lemmings (thanks to Acmlm for the idea). Note that, on the NES, you can either have these musical SFX or a predetermined track of music playing. You can't have both the SFX and the music at the same time :(. BTW, some levels have the same musical tracks, which could make the game boring if the music is selected.
In summary, I'd like to know how much interest there is in a TAS of NES Lemmings. I'd also like to know of any ideas that could make the game interesting.
EDIT:
I'll put the most recent WIP in this post. Here's
up through level 10.
