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Commander Keen: Keen Dreams Source Code Released
New submitter ildon writes: Recently, the rights holder of former game publisher Softdisk's game library put the rights to some of their old titles up for sale, including Commander Keen: Keen Dreams, one of the few games in the series not to be published by Apogee. A group of fans created an Indiegogo campaign to purchase those rights. We are just now seeing the fruits of that effort with the full source code of the game being published to GitHub. About a year ago, Tom Hall found the sources to episodes 4-6, but it's not clear what, if any, progress has been made on getting Bethesda to allow that code to be released.
There's a reason for that. Many years ago I tried to obtain the source code to Cmdr Keen 1-3, somewhat after their heyday (if there was such a thing). Both Carmack and Romero told me that the source code was lost during an office move - see the link to Tom Hall's post - but even if they did find it, it would be easier to code a compatible game engine from scratch in a clean(er) modern language. It might be nice to have for nostalgic reasons, but it would serve no practical purpose.
These games should have been released for android/IOS years ago.. they would have made a buttload of money off of that old IP.
If they are just going to sit on it they need to release it and let people that are not lazy make it come back to life.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It is weird, looking back from a time when they're so closely associated with another kind of game.
There are other good examples - such as The Lost Vikings, made by none other than Blizzard. And before Epic became all about shooters and engines they made Jazz Jackrabbit, Tyrian, One Must Fall 2097 and Epic Pinball.