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20 Years of Commander Keen
angry tapir writes "This week marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the first Commander Keen game. For those too young to remember, Commander Keen was a series of shareware 2D platform games for the PC released by Apogee Software (aka 3D Realms) developed by no less than id Software — the developers of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake."
DooM was only released 3 years after Commander Keen. I'm honestly a bit surprised that DooM didnt get an article celebrating its awesomeness...
I wonder why they don't just release the source/game to celebrate or something. Its not like they're going to make any more money off it.
God, I'm old. :P
I still remember getting the shareware version on floppy from a games magazine. Great game, lots of fun. Then came Doom and switched cable two player Doom... ahhhhhhhh
Along with Civilization I, Dune I and Wolfenstein, it was one of the reasons I could thrive with my old 286 until 1998.
And the lack of money to buy anything else, of course.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
I loved the afk yo-yo!
Oh, god, I remember the Commander Keen games. I was a purely PC gamer back in the early 90s; the parents wouldn't have a console in the house at the time. To be honest, I don't remember the original Commander Keen being particularly great. It was one of those EGA platformers with very sparse graphics that seemed to be everywhere on the PC at the time. I think of it like the original Duke Nukem platformers; games which are remembered not in their own right, but for what they went on to spawn.
What did blow me away, however, was Keen 4 (Secret of the Oracle), which came out a year later. This was a huge leap forwards in terms of graphics and sound. The sad thing is that I can still hum some of the pieces of background music from that game. The gameplay was also much improved, with Keen's movement feeling much more natural, and some really great level design. It actually gave PC gamers of the time a game that they could pretend was almost as good as the likes of Super Mario World and Sonic the Hedgehog. I don't think I saw a better platformer on the PC until Jazz Jackrabbit, which I'm fairly sure was a few years later.
Actually, isn't the Keen series available on Steam these days? I must pick that up this evening. Take a look at the episodes from the "full" version that I never saw in my youth.
I was grinning like and idiot all the way through the whole set of screenshots. Great memories.
It is the universe that makes fun of us all.
Keen was a fantastic 2D platformer. Why hasn't anyone ported it to the DS, PSP, iPhone, etc. ?
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Secret of the Oracle. The one with the infamous fish. Only actually finished it in 2008, for that matter (I first played it around 1994, but never finished until rediscovering it a long time later).
SWIM SWIM HUNGRY
Dopefish Lives!
I remember I had to fix my uncle's computer because he had deleted COMMAND.COM thinking it was part of Commander Keen.
To be honest, I didn't find it all that great. I guess you had to be there.
They don't have them anymore. They were sold to FormGen by Apogee, who in turn sold them to Activision, so we can safely assume they're down the bit bucket.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
If you're gonna go back to that era, someone needs to mention the great shareware FTP archives of the pre-Web internet: wustl.edu, garbo.uwasa.fi, simpnet (? it's been too long).
Am I the only one who kept checking the READMEs for new pointers by the maintainers? I probably downloaded way too many games on the recommendation of obscure Finnish professors :-)
This game was great, it kept my kids off the lawn when it came out.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
...is on a 16 MHz 386SX cpu. At least, that's how I remember it. Time to go dust mine off. Now get the hell off my lawn!
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The original trilogy hasn't aged well. The controls suck balls (and did even back then) and the graphics are horrid.
4, 5, and the elusive 6 are still excellent.
The controls are improved, the play is smooth, and they're pretty enough to be visually interesting most of the time. The graphics are in that "good enough" sweet spot where, though they may not look modern exactly, they aren't so far behind that they're a shock.
Dunno, it seems to me DOOM should do the same as everyone else celebrate 18 when it can go get drunk and laid. Well, at least drunk anyway. But laid is right next, as soon as it can get a girl into its mom's basement that is totally awed by its grenade jumping skills. Any day now ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I've paid Amazon for 20-plus year old movies and books before. Why should buying a 20 year old game from Steam be any different?
Correction: not Activision, but Infogrames, which is now Atari. It went something like this:
With CKeen, episode 6 (Aliens Ate My Babysitter), the game was published by FormGen, and Apogee was only a retailer. In 1996, FormGen was sold to GT Interactive, along with the rights to Commander Keen. In 1999, Infogrames Entertainment SA took a controlling stake in GT and renamed the whole company Infogrames, Inc. Then, in 2003, Infogrames Inc. changed their name to Atari Inc. and it sits like that up until now. Formally, Atari is the owner of all the IP surrounding Commander Keen.
I mistook Atari for Activision since it was Activision who published the GameBoy Color version in 2001 (leading to much Fanon Discontinuity).
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
For those fans disappointed by the cancellation of "The Universe is Toast", there is an excellent series of fan sequels available:
http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/The_Universe_Is_Toast_(MOD_Trilogy)
They are set up as mods to Keen 4, Keen 6, and Keen 5, respectively, although the third is not available yet.
It's the only version I have played, and I have a copy that runs under DOSBox.
Yes, you had to be there to appreciate it for what it was at the time.
I've paid Amazon for 20-plus year old movies and books before. Why should buying a 20 year old game from Steam be any different?
I agree whole heartedly. While I enjoy a lot of the games today, there are still old titles that haunt my memory. Especially some of those I never finished.
Solar Winds... Planescape:Torment... Might and Magic series...
There are a ton of old games that are of high quality and worth playing again.
Commander Keen... What an awesome series of games with tons of personality.
Having always been more of a PC gamer I felt like the platform was deprived by a distinct lack of good platforming games. Then Commander Keen came along and there was something quite good to point to; the PC can do it too.
Compared to other platformers of the time it was actually a decent game, especially the later games where the tiling wasn't as simplistic and graphics and gameplay were more robust.
Most of the latter part of my childhood was spent playing Commander Keen, it was truly one of the best games I ever played. I adored it. That's really all I had to say, but I had to post just to say it. My Ubuntu login screen has Commander Keen as my user icon at work, I'd love to see the code released as OSS.
For those who need reminding and don't have a copy of it, play it in your browser using JPC:
http://jpc.sourceforge.net/keen.html
There are other versions here:
http://classicdosgames.com/online.html
How so? Maybe they actually provide good value for your money. While I haven't bought any old games off of Steam, I do often buy old games from Good Old Games like for example Redneck Rampage Collection and Blood I & II.
By buying them from Good Old Games not only do I get DRM free gaming, but I also get OOTB support for both X86 and X64 on XP - Windows 7 with ZERO hassles. in fact what turned me on to GoG was trying to get my original Redneck Rampage disc to play on Windows 7 X64, which was a royal PITA to set up and configure DOSBox with. With GoG it was as easy as 1.-buy game and download it, 2.- install game on X64 via "clicky clicky next next next", 3.-Play game full screen on windows 7 HP x64 with NO glitching or hassles.
There are plenty of us out here that will happily part with a few dollars to have the bullshit and hassles removed from classic gaming on modern OSes. With most of the classics at just $5 (and often less than half that on sale, like the $5 I paid for both Blood I&II) to me it is WELL worth that trivial amount not to deal with hoop jumping and trawling forums for tweaks and fixes when I can just install and play. Oh and for Linux guys check out the GoGMixes, where they have such topics as perfect for Linux Netbooks and Open Sourced Games. Well worth throwing them a couple of bucks for hassle free gaming IMHO.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
There is an open source project for an engine to run the first 3 Keen games:
http://clonekeen.sourceforge.net/
I can't stress enough how much I want a new Keen game. Who owns the rights these days? Atari?
If I was a small game development company trying to make a name for myself, this would be a perfect project. There are WAY too many shooters, and it is hard to differentiate yourself in that market, especially on a budget.
But a good platformer can be developed on the cheap. New platformers still find ways to innovate and change gameplay all the time. You can capitalize on the fact that this a known name and might get hyped up by eager geeks, but at the same time the franchise has been dormant long enough that you might get the license real cheap.
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Hell, I've probably spent more on ZX Spectrum emulators than I ever did on ZX Spectrum hardware when it was current - through Gerton Lunter's original "Z80" emulator to modern-day "Spectactulator". The free ones don't cut the mustard and don't have the licensed ROM's for certain add-ons, and I can play all my old games again. There is *nothing* like a quick blast on Chaos at 16x speed (if you can control the cursor okay) in a window while you're doing other stuff. And Batty still kick arse too.
Buying "old" stuff isn't a bad thing. Buying "shit" from any era is. I am more likely to laugh at someone who spends £60 on a game that they'll complete or throw away in an hour than someone who spends £100 on emulators (yes, there are plenty of free ones but the more niche systems tend to be on a pay-for basis - hell, I own a CD-i emulator!) so they can have thousands of hours of gaming. Cost per hour of entertainment - that's my statistic. If that's too low, I won't bother. Currently I consider anything over £1 / hour a waste of money and most of my Steam games get me a LOT more than that (one is currently on it's 256th hour for just under £5... work it our for yourself). Now think how much people piss away on DVD's, Bluray, and cinema, arcade games, fruit machines, pinball, etc. not to mention modern full-price video games (including the costs of having the appropriate equipment for all of those things) and how much they actually get out of it. Some of them are in the "more than £15 / hour" category at times! Besides the fact, if they are actually any good as games, you'll be picking them up next year for half the price (and half the price again the year after) and have a better-bugfixed version of the EXACT SAME game for much cheaper.
Gimme a hundred games from when I was a kid than a single modern-day one, any day. It's called sensible buying, and getting your money's worth. I *do* own Keen on Steam. It cost me £1 or so I think, on a deal. If I play it for an hour, that's my money's worth out of it. Now, how many times would I have to play through the "newest" game, and enjoy every second of doing that, in order to bring it down to the same amount per hour of entertainment?
Seeing this makes me miss the Amiga even more. Yes, I know you couldn't get Keen on the Amiga. Ask me if thought that was a great loss.
--srj/mmv
There was nothing like staying home sick from school, dialing up to one of my favorite local BBS's, and waiting a few hours for the Commander Keen shareware version to download. The game was great and the first episode had some pretty sweet PC speaker sound effects. This was definitely an underrated side scroller. Action packed, challenging, and kept you wanting to play more. It's no Doom, but we're not even comparing the same kind of game here. Simply holding the [G] [O] and [D] keys at the same time enabled God Mode. Can't beat that. And that super jump that allows you to pretty much float across an entire map was also pretty bad ass. Can't believe it's already been 20 years.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
For those too young to remember, Commander Keen was a series of shareware 2D platform games for the PC released by Apogee
There's no place like
The early keen games may not be sophisticated by today's standards, but they're still fun. And Apogee had a great marketing plan. They would give away the first full game. Then if you liked it, you could purchase the sequels. Hmm...yes a bit like a dealer. ;-)
Appropriately enough, here is the Dopefish, who has a fan page and who's midi music theme will get stuck in your head.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
Ahh the memories. Shareware games and MUDS were great at the time for derailing my academic career. I know my high school and college grades suffered because of this time killers. Kids are so spoiled now with all the ways to kill their grades. They have whole cool worlds to kill time in with built in refreshes to keep the fix going.
Ahhh keen.. wasted so much time in the drafting lab in HS playing keen (and then wolfenstein 3d, and Doom) instead of autocad...
-Tm
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Jazz Jackrabbit
I have all of the keen games. 1 thru 6 and dreams.
I will have to look into that site. I had problems running Fallout 1 and 2 I bought on Steam, seems they forgot to update the engines to handle a 64 bit Windows 7 machine, so it actually won't even run. Though I did get Fallout Tactics to run, I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I would have Fallout 1/2.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Well I can't tell you about 2 or Tactics but I do have Fallout 1 I bought from there and it works flawlessly. In fact out of all the games I have bought from there I have run ito exactly ONE that I had trouble OOTB with (i76 Nitro Pack) which was a late Win9x game, but I simply went to their excellent forums and there was a link to a patch and an explanation of the work around. It turned out the game was hard coded to a specific GPU timing which would get thrown on certain chipsets or GPUs. Applied the patch, followed the instructions, and voila! I was blasting cars ala Mad Max to 70s funk and having a grand old time!
So if you haven't given them a shot make yourself an account and sign up for the newsletter. They will send you an email with the weekend sales, which are often 50%-60% off, and considering how low the prices are to start with you can get the games for a little of nothing. I paid a whole $2 for the original Fallout. And as I said x64 support comes OOTB and their forums are great, filled with everything from advice and help to walkthroughs and mods. And of course NO DRM and NO download or install limits.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
This is one of my favorite games of all times. This and the original Duke Nukem. Played this about the same time as the original Lemmings, Ultima Underworld, the Humans, Lost Vikings, Civilization 1, Warlords II. What a great era. And it all played on my 386.
One of the "hacks" I was most proud of was reverse engineering the level structure for Keen, so I could make my own levels (this was before someone more professional than I released an editor a few years later).
Not that it was too difficult with a hex editor, and id software didn't try to obfuscate the levels or anything. But still, a couple weeks well spent!
expandfairuse.org
To be honest, I don't remember the original Commander Keen being particularly great. It was one of those EGA platformers with very sparse graphics that seemed to be everywhere on the PC at the time.
Graphically, the first trilogy wasn't that great. But it was the first ever PC game to feature full-screen smoothly scrolling graphics. Before that, such performance was only possible on consoles.
PC games just repainted the whole world on each frame, and therefore to save performance, lots of games did only displayed the game world in a small window in the game screen (think like Captain Comic)
Keen was the first game to make popular the hardware trick enabling smooth scrolling.
Luckily by the time of the second trilogy, they have accumulated enough experience so it featured really top-quality art in addition to an even better scrolling
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One of the first games my siblings and I ever played on our first family computer. Jump started my love of gaming.
Remember in the first one (I think), you could stand in certain spots to make the wolves fall off the end of the world near the exits? *sigh* good times.