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Commander Keen is a series of video games developed by id Software in the early 1990s, which was successful at replicating the side-scrolling action of the NES Super Mario Bros. games in MS-DOS. The cartoon-style platformers are notable for their pioneering use of EGA graphics and shareware distribution, and because they were the first games by id Software (which went on to develop blockbusters like Doom and Quake). The games were also exciting to the PC gaming community of the time because of John Carmack's revolutionary smooth-scrolling graphics engine. Although developed by id, most of the Commander Keen games were published by Apogee Software, an already established MS-DOS shareware game publisher. Tom Hall is Commander Keen
Episodes Seven official Commander Keen games were released for the PC under MS-DOS. They are divided in mini-series, and are considered "episodes" of the full series. Under the Apogee version of the shareware model (the "Apogee Model"), usually the first episode of a series was available at no charge. The eighth game in the series is available exclusively for the Game Boy Color. Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons 1. "Marooned on Mars" (first released as shareware on December 14 1990) While Commander Keen is exploring Mars, the Vorticon steal four vital components of his ship and hide them in Martian cities, each guarded by a Vorticon soldier. In this episode, Keen acquires his trademark pogo stick and meets a variety of Martian aliens and robots. 2. "The Earth Explodes" Keen returns to Earth only to find the Vorticon mothership hovering above, with its ray cannons locked on to eight of Earth's greatest wonders, including the Egyptian pyramids and the Sydney Opera House. Keen has to find and deactivate each of the cannons to save Earth. Unlike the first game which had a happy and friendly atmosphere, almost everything in this game is hostile towards Keen, from the floating machine gun robots to the electrified floors. The engine has a couple of extra features such as light switches and moving platforms, making this game the hardest of the trilogy. 3. "Keen Must Die!" Keen travels to the Vorticon homeworld in search of the mysterious Grand Intellect that has directed the Vorticons toward Earth. The game features the cities, parks, and suburbs of the Vorticons, and their women, children, pets, and mechanical toys make up the enemies. The Vorticon alphabet is also decoded in a school house, allowing for the player to travel to the other in-game locations and read the Vorticon signs. Interlude 3.5. "Keen Dreams" aka The "Lost Episode" (published as shareware by Softdisk) After refusing to eat his vegetables, Keen is sent to bed by his parents. He falls asleep, only to awaken in a strange vegetable kingdom led by the evil potato king Boobus Tuber, who has imprisoned other sleeping children there. In the dream world, Keen does not have his trademark raygun and pogo stick, but has to defend himself with "Flower Power" seeds that temporarily turn enemies into flowers. Commander Keen in Goodbye Galaxy! 4. "Secret of the Oracle" (first released as shareware on December 15 1991) Keen's newly finished homemade faster-than-light radio picks up a plot by the Shikadi to destroy the galaxy. He rushes to the planet Gnosticus IV to consult the Keepers of the Oracle, but discovers that they have been taken captive. Thus, the gameplay centers on Keen finding and rescuing the eight elders. This episode features huge levels and a wide variety of enemies, such as rocks that only move when your back is turned, and improved game mechanics. 5. "The Armageddon Machine" After getting information from the Oracle, Keen lands on a massive Shikadi space station, the Omegamatic, nicknamed the Armageddon Machine, and seeks out the mysterious Gannalech. The gameplay centers on Keen advancing through the Omegamatic to deactivate it. Commander Keen in Aliens Ate My Babysitter! 6. Aliens Ate My Babysitter! (published commercially only by FormGen, who resold it to Apogee; now discontinued) When Keen's babysitter Molly is abducted by the Bloogs, Keen must come to her rescue by fighting his way through the inhabitants of the planet Fribbulus Xax. To date, this is the last episode of the original Keen series. Commander Keen (GBC) Cancelled games Plot Billy Blaze is an eight-year-old boy genius who has constructed a spaceship in his backyard from old soup cans and other household objects, called The Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket. When his parents are out and the babysitter falls asleep, he dons his brother's Packers helmet and becomes Commander Keen, Defender of Earth. In the first game, Keen is exploring on Mars when aliens steal four spaceship components that he must get back. The aliens are the Vorticon, a fierce dog-humanoid race that had an outpost on Mars. Keen travels through different martian cities, and eventually recovers all the missing parts. But when Keen gets back to Earth, he finds the Vorticon mothership looming over the planet, with its cannons ready to attack. In the second game, Keen infiltrates the mothership and has to disable each of the Tantalus Rays targeting different Earth cities. During this adventure, Keen learns that the Vorticons used to be a peaceful race, but were enslaved by the mysterious Grand Intellect. After disabling the cannons, Keen travels to the Vorticon homeplanet, Vorticon VI. In the third game, Keen has to face the Vorticon masses in their cities, all ready to kill Keen. After fighting through many levels of Vorticon-infested cities and millitary installations, Keen arrives at the lair of the Grand Intellect. There he discovers that the leader of the Vorticons is actually his old school rival Mortimer McMire. In the final level, Keen has to disable the "Mangling Machine", a large apparatus with many crushing parts controlled by the Mortimer. Keen eventually defeats Mortimer and frees the Vorticons. But unbeknown to Keen, the Mortimer he had defeated was only an android duplicate. The real Mortimer goes on to lead the Shikadi, a race of energy beings who name him the Gannalech. In episodes 4 and 5, he attempts to destroy the galaxy with the Shikadi Omegamatic, but Keen stumbles on a radio message mentioning the Shikadi plans. In the fourth game, he travels to Gnosticus IV, to learn more about the Shikadi from the Oracle. However, when he gets there he discovers that the guardians of the Oracle have been captured by the Shikadi, and are imprisoned in the Shadowlands of the planet. Keen travels through dangerous forests, caves, and islands, and is finally able to rescue all of them. The guardians activate the Oracle, which tells Keen about the Omegamatic being near completion, and reveals the location of the station, in the Korath system. In the fifth episode, Keen travels to Korath III and enters the Omegamatic, in order to destroy its core, the Quantum Explosion Dynamo, and stop the destruction of the galaxy. After avoiding several defense systems, Keen is able to reach and destroy the device. There he learns that Mortimer was the Gannalech, and his true intentions are made clear - to destroy the universe. In the sixth and final episode, Mortimer has Keen's babysitter kidnapped by the Bloogs in order to distract him. After travelling to Fribbulus Xax, Keen explores the alien planet and saves Molly from being eaten. Characters Billy Blaze, a.k.a. Commander Keen, or simply Keen, is the main character of the games, and the player's alter ego. Keen is an eight-year-old boy genius purported to have an IQ of 314 (a reference to π). Keen's full name is William Joseph Blazkowicz II, and he is the grandson of William Joseph "B.J." Blazkowicz (the Allied war hero of Wolfenstein 3D). Keen's parents are Arthur Kenneth Blazkowicz, a television talk show personality in Milwaukee, and Susan Elizabeth McMichaels. Keen's father changed his last name to Blaze for show biz. Keen has one older brother, name unknown. During Keen's first adventure in Mars, one of the friendlier martian aliens, a green critter with an eye on a stalk (called a Yorp) sneaked into his spaceship and came along home. Keen adopted him and named him Spot. The main antagonist of the series is Mortimer McMire, Keen's arch-rival at school. Mortimer is an evil eight-year-old genius, and has an IQ of 315, as opposed to Keen's 314. In episode 3, it is revealed that McMire was somewhat of a bully towards Keen, beating him up and giving him swirlies becauseof the latter's lower IQ. McMire wears a black football helmet, which resembles that from an obscure football team, the Maulers, from the now-defunct United States Football League. Mortimer's older sister, Molly, is Keen's babysitter. Mortimer's main goal is to destroy all beings of lesser intelligence (i.e. the entire galaxy). In the first game series, Mortimer enslaves the Vorticon, a once peaceful alien race, and attempts to use them to destroy Earth. In the second game series, Mortimer convinced the the Shikadi, a race of energy beings, to destroy the galaxy. Mortimer's next plan was to destroy the entire universe, but as the trilogy called The Universe is Toast was never created, his plans were left on indefinite hiatus. However, Mortimer had another couple of appearances: he is responsible for Keen's babysitter's abduction in episode 6 of the series, and in the Game Boy Color release of Commander Keen, Mortimer is responsible for another alien race attempting to rule the galaxy. Tom Hall, Commander Keens creative designer, mentioned that Keen is based on himself at age eight.* Keen wears a Green Bay Packers football helmet due to the fact that Tom Hall is from Wisconsin. Creation and development John Carmack, a game programmer at Softdisk, invented a trick that would allow smooth-scrolling graphics in PC games, but only with the 16-color EGA graphics card. Softdisk rejected the technology because they wanted to continue to support customers who only had 4-color CGA cards. Carmack and his Softdisk colleague Tom Hall used their own time to put together a clone of the first level of Super Mario Bros. 3, except for the hero, which they replaced with Dangerous Dave, a character from John Romero's games for Softdisk. They called it Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement and approached Nintendo with the demo, who declined to enter the PC market at that time. John Romero recognized their game technology had huge potential. He was contacted by Scott Miller of Apogee, who, after seeing some of id's work, advanced the team $2,000 for the development of Commander Keen, starting a profitable business relationship that would last until id Software self-published Doom. The first trilogy, Invasion of the Vorticons, was completed in three months. After developing it the team left Softdisk to form id Software. However, the developers of id had a contract with Softdisk requiring them to write several more games, one of which became Keen Dreams. Keen Dreams is sometimes referred to as "Keen 3.5" or the "Lost Episode", as it was never distributed by Apogee.* The sequel to Invasion of the Vorticons was supposed to be another trilogy. Episode 6 (Aliens Ate my Babysitter!) was originally planned to be part of it, along with episode 4 and 5 (which ended up as Goodbye Galaxy!), but was later changed into a stand-alone commercial episode. Episode 6 was actually developed before episode 5.* By series
Humour An important part of Keen games is their humour and cartoon-like ambience. Humorous references can be found in the characters, enemies, items, backstory, locations, levels, signs, and animations. Tom Hall has stated that many elements of the games were inspired by Chuck Jones's Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century.* This can be seen directly at least in two references to the Acme Corporation from Looney Toons: in the world-map for episode two, which is the blueprints of the Vorticon Mothership, there is a small sign in the Standard Galactic Alphabet that says "Blueprint - Acme". Also, at the end of episode four, the Oracle has the sign "Acme Oracle" written on it in the same alphabet. Some lesser-known humorous references include the following: Fan-made Keen games A number of fan-made Commander Keen games of varying quality have been created, mostly using Klik & Play, Click & Create, Game Maker and similar game construction software. The Public Commander Keen Forum has a forum devoted to the announcement and discussion of these unofficial Keen games. CloneKeen is a game engine recreation that requires the original datafiles, and supports episodes 1 through 3. It was programmed on and off by Caitlin Shaw since 2003, and finally released on October 18 2005. It is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux, GP2X, and Sega Dreamcast. It has also been ported to the Sony PSP in February 2006. In the years since the release in early 2002 of utilities to modify the levels and graphics in the original Keen series, more than fifty mods have been made. Most of these have Commander Keen as the protagonist, but some use the Commander Keen engine to develop an entirely new game. While many of the fangames are of poor quality, having problems dealing with clipping interface and playability, several of the mods are of similar or higher quality to the original games. The tools and utilities used to modify the games, as well as a body of accumulated knowledge of the Keen code, are constantly being updated and improved. Much of this work has been done by Andy Durdin, who has written utilities for the editing of Keen graphics and levels. He has also done much in determining the inner-workings of the Keen engine, allowing many mods to be even more unique than the Commander Keen episode they were created from. Keen in other games See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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