Commander Keen: 13 Years Later

16977 writes "I just noticed that Id Software is now selling downloadable versions of its classic titles Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons and Goodbye Galaxy. Although the game is over 10 years old by now, there is still a thriving community of Keen fans out there whose interest has not waned. We now have level editors for both Keen Vorticons and Goodbye Galaxy, unofficial Keen fan software, and of course the infamous Dopefish, which has by now made cameo appearances in well over a dozen computer games. However, we have yet to see Commander Keen: The Universe is Toast, the sequel to the previous Keen game that was planned but never made. With the original developers pursuing their own independent projects, it doesn't look like it will happen anytime soon. But in the meantime, die-hard Keen fans have been getting by, not unlike Farscape fans after their show was cancelled."

Comments

Other Games

[hoagieslapper]

Too bad other game manufacturers won't follow suit and make their older titles available for (legit) download.

Re:Other Games

[jweatherley]

I'm guessing that the Commander Keen source will be x86 assembly. Might be interesting to those in the know but a lot less useful than C source - no porting to other platforms. Does anyone know for sure what it was written in? Come on JohnC - get away from the rocketry for a few minutes and talk about some important stuff!

Good, But...

[menasius]

I agree, this is really great. I used to love to play the Keens as well as many other games. And there are many times I've slammed down a new graphically pretty peice of trash and wished I had a classic.

The problem is companies don't want to release most of their old games because times have changed and so have operating systems. With the terrible legacy DOS support in XP for things like games you are almost forced to run them emulated in linux (dosemu, etc..). Also, no matter how much companies say "we have no support line for this, use at your own risk" you'll always get contacts asking about this and that.

In reality, these games need to be released to a team of volunteer developers when they are no longer economically valuable to the Company. Then that team can update as the times change if there is still an underground following.

OR, the obvious choice which was discussed in an earlier topics is to start making games that are fun again as opposed to yet another graphically gorgeous First-person-run-through-the-hallway-with-a-rocket -launcher-conveniently-located-at-chest-level. Not that all FPS are bad but look at the numbers... its like hitting a dust mite with a musket.

-bart

The Price

[moertle]

I noticed that Commander Keen was available a while back and I was actually going to buy it. But they wanted $15!!! for a download only game. The price point for a 13-year-old-download-only game should be about $5. I'm sure if I dug through the bargain bin at Toys R Us I could find a boxed version for $5.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

PAGING ID SOFTWARE!

[barspin]

Here's a company that has enjoyed huge critical and financial success with it's products. Instead of giving away (with an appropriate license) their 13-year-old make-it-big game, they sell it. No box, $15. The price isn't rational, and it's easy to argue that they should simply give the game away as a "thanks" to their customers and fans.

Sure, I don't have a right to have the game for free. But it's my opinion it would be the proper thing to do. This will certainly sour some folks on id.

How are the Ferrari's driving these days, Jon?

Old goodbye galaxy glitch

[ScriptGuru]

I don't remember what switch I made, Win3.1 -> Win95, 486 -> 586, etc, but the bottom half of the screen was covered in lines and shapes. If anyone ever had this problem and found a fix, I'd appreciate a response.

Re:Not with my source codes!

[carrox]

At least cok1 runs fine under dosemu+freedos...