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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."
I'm glad that they are releasing some of the original work that Id and John Romero so great. It is also noticeable that they have also released Intergalactic Delivery Boy (no, not for free) for the PocketPC. It is really down to John Romero's and Hall's roots. After all, Id games are best when they are simple.
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Well, the best Commander Keen reference IMHO was the secret Wolfenstein level in Doom II: They even had the secret WOLF level (within the secret D2 level) and behind the last door there was: Commander Keen hanging from the roof. You had to shoot the poor fellow to get to the next level...
Excellence: Moderate (mostly affected by comments on your karma)
I run a small games programming community, and recently had this submition from one of my users. Those with win98/win95/dos should certainly give it a try, its full of parodies and general humour and the gameplay is excellent.
I remember downloading the shareware version (a massive 600K!) of Commander Keen in Goodbye Galaxy via FidoNet freq (file request). You could file request files from other BBSes, and they'd be sent to your BBS (I ran 2:252/204 at the time). I had endless fun playing Commander Keen in a DesqView DOS session whilst the BBS ran in the other DOS session on my amazing 16MHz 80386 computer with 2.5MB of RAM!
:-)
The Dopefish for some reason reminded me of Sir Les Patterson, the Australian minister of Culture
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
If Keen could run on a 386, can't it run on my Palm? I want it on my Palm!
wtf? id is charging money for Commander Keen??
Carmack's going broke or something?
I agree. They're basically saying; "Give us $15 and we'll let you download this 13 year old game that may or may not work on your system. If it doesn't work, you can't download it, or you accidently delete the downloaded file - well, we guess you're screwed. Too bad." I don't think even MS would do something like that.
I totally agree with this post, $15 is a lot for such an old game. Id's greed doesn't just end there though, and please folks, consider what i'm about to say.
I'm in the process of opening up a game house / pc bang, whatever you want to call it. During my research I found out that some companies require gamehouses to pay licensing fee's for each title they carry. This isn't just a one time fee or even something reasonable, if you're running a 40 pc gamehouse you can expect to pay 10k + per year per title.
Now my argument against this goes along these lines. Capcom, Atari, ect all provided more than just a cabinet when they sold you a game. You got a cabinet (physical security) Coin Mech (money validator) Access software (credits) Input Device (Joystick, buttons) Service contracts, monitor, and the game. Usually it was anywhere between a 50/50 to a 25/75 split for the quarters between the cabinet owner and the person that owned the property.
Now with a gamehouse, I'm providing those first 6 items, while the game company only provides the game. After looking at paying off employee's, loans, and a lease, these fee's are going to be eating up enough of my profits to where me, the owner is going to be lucky to break even at the end of the month. On top of all that I have a machine that needs to be replaced every 2-3 years to stay current with the CPL standard so I can host CPL qualifyers at my place.
Now I could see paying licensing fee's if there was some sort of value added service, like my cdkey's were bound to my subnet in their multiplayer authentication database, that way if some smart ass kid try's to steal it for use on their home computer it would just say "Hey you're not playing from toqers gamehouse, sorry" (Note, i'm doing my best to secure machines so it doesn't happen but you never know) At least that would take care of one of the 6 items I have to provide.
I'm going to pay these fee's only because I have too. I wouldn't mind testing the legal waters of this, but as a startup gamehouse I am in no position to do so. In the future though, I want the game companies to understand that if they don't want me taking them to court and suing their asses under fair use laws, they better step up to the plate and at least make a better case for these fee's than "Well you're making money on it" Better CYA now and start adding features to the gamehouse versions of your games, because I'm a comin for you.
Look here for all your Dopefish needs!
that it took until 1990 for the first game capable of side-scrolling! Dang, the Nintendo had that for 5 years before and was already on Mario 3! That is pretty bad and shows how far computer games were behind technology wise. Of course Id would put computer gaming on the forefront of technology with the Doom.
Which begs the question of whether computer gaming would be dead without John Carmack. I know not every game needs cutting edge 3d graphics (Europa Universalis) but many games would be greatly lessened without being able to create believable worlds (Jedi Knight II).
Brian Ellenberger
I told you to sit in a corner because name calling is a childish. The parent poster didn't personally sling mud at you, he just had an opinion that you didn't like so you went off base and called him an idiot.
And evidentally you didn't read my post that well. It's more than just cutting into the owners profits, the current licensing schemes by Id, Valve, EA, Blizzard and others is going to leave me with $500@mo if i'm lucky. Even my minimum wage employee's will be making more than me, but this is the burden I take as the owner.
Funny as this sounds, even MS has a better game house licensing than those formentioned companies. MS and Epic both only require you to purchase a copy of the game for each station, with no recurring licensing fee's. Isn't that funny? Here I am showcasing their games on dope ass hardware, even selling copies when I load demo games on my systems, and they still want a cut of that.
Carmack and the rest of Id needs to think about their pricing issues.
Oh and as far as What do you mean by "corporate and greedy"? goes, well yeah, I'm corporate now. CEO of my own corporation yay! In America though, we have laws (rules) that are there to keep things in fair play. Sometimes corporations go beyond the boundries of fair play, which is why MS, standard oil, enron and a host of other companies got bitchslapped by the DOJ.
I could never understand the big deal over this game. To me the controls were bad. Kind of like the Epic Pinball game, where the physics were really lame compared to others.
Does anyone else feel Commander Keen was over rated?
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
Keen was released in my pre-Geek days. I bought a used Hyundai PC Clone (8086) from my brother and he downloaded(!) a copy of "Keen: Attack of the Vorticons" so I'd have something to amuse my kids with. Long story short, it was me who ended up spending hours attempting to save the universe.
Come to think of it, I never DID save the universe. Holy smoke!!! That explains a lot!
Why are we seeing all these abaondware games (Keen, GTA, Lost Vikings) coming back? I personally think it doest with the nostalgia trend... you know how everyone is in love with Transformers again, or wearing Thundercats t-shirts... It's now progressed to the classic DOS games. I have mixed feelings about this movementâ"its nice to see the toys and games I grew up with coming back again, but at the same time itâ(TM)s must like seeing my past being whored out for a quick buck. I could probably go on with this prostitute analogy but this isnâ(TM)t the time or place for itâ¦
Getting back on topic:
Yes it would be nice to see Keen, Captain Comic and others of those type to come back and be available for the palm platform, or even as a free game for an X desktop (much like XBill and Xcivâ"think Keen as new FreeCell for your OS)-- but the age old adage stole holds - "If there is a buck to made... two bucks will be charged"
I also remember one day reinstalling Wing Commander 2 on my Pentium MMX, and losing very bad to the fact my computer was just to fast for the game⦠Would these games be recoded to account for the increase in processor speed since then?
I can remember playing those games all of the time. My dad was getting his PhD at VA Tech and I would go and visit him and play on the 386s in his lab - envious of those guys that got to get some time in on their amazing 486 that they had in there... it had some crazy about of RAM like 16MB - I remember just being blown away by it - and wonder how it would play games.
It seems now that the new phones that are coming out that are color and all - the commander keen series would port over to that relatively well - perhaps this has already been done since it seems to obvious.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
The AI game succeeded because it had good content. It succeeded because the writer for the Beast, Sean Stewart, was a great sci-fi novelist, and he took care to create the characters and the world they inhabited with words that suspended disbelief. Sure the graphics and everything else helped, but the writing was what really made it all work together.
I can't really convey how good the writing for that game was -- but you can get a taste for it from his novels. Some of the writing in that game, such as a dialog in words-and-pictures between a man and his slave-AI who wanted to be free, was done with more care and more evocative than anything I saw in the AI movie itself. It was really art.
Not only they care about their fanbase but by what you say they know how to seduce the modders and give them incentives to mod their game, which will probably contribute to the success of the game.
1. Invite best modders of previous game for a superb visit.
2. Let them do their magic on the graciously offered new games.
3. Let the word spread of how cool the reception was (like you just did) and make other want to go there.
4. To go there they need to make high quality mods so their number is more likely to grow (competition oblige).
5. big mod community increases the value of the game for the players, thus selling more of them.
6. Profit (at last)
An excellent way to take care of your fans and of yourself, a win-win situation.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,