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Commander Keen: A Gaming Odyssey
Background:
Commander Keen is an 2D action platformer game created in the 90s. It was developed by Apogee, which was formerly 3D realms. The game followed the adventures of an eight-year-old boy genius named Billy Blazer, or called Commander Keen. The plot was developed over 5 games, but was abruptly halted when the company got a hit with the first Wolfenstein game. When the lead designer, Tom Hall, wanted to revisit the Keen franchise after end of development for Wolfenstein, the team moved on to a game named Doom instead.
Tom Hall tried to create a sequel to the Keen games called Commander Keen in 2020, but it got canceled before launch. The premise has to do with Commander Keen’s two kids: Billy and Billie. They were boy and girl siblings that would carry on the adventures of their father. As of this feature, all references to Commander Keen have vanished on Bethesda and Zenimax websites. He had a Kickstarter engine called Worlds of Wander and a game associated with the engine called Secret Spaceship club, which was a spiritual successor to Commander Keen.
My start on the game:
I was introduced to Commander Keen in the mid 90s. I played the original Mario for NES, but I didn’t ignore the gems that were on computers in the early days. I was fortunate enough that episode one of Commander Keen was shareware, or downloaded for free, but the other games in this series were costly at the time. Today, it’s close to $30.00 for one of the games. I played Keen 1 and 4 a lot because they were the only free games I could download the free versions of. Objectively, they did a good enough job continuing an on-going narrative battling outside forces.
The entire series was 5-6 total games. The first three were setup as one trilogy and the next 3 were setup as another trilogy. The 6th game has been deadlocked for years in a legal battle for rights issues. But episodes 1-5 are on Steam and Gogamer respectively.
Art wise, the world of Commander Keen was wonderful. It was 2D purity, a fun platformer, variety of gadgets for Keen, but also non linear to process the story.
I also enjoyed the character design of Keen. He is based on one of the founding creators of the game, John Carmack. Carmack based a lot of Keen’s attire around his childhood. In addition to that, the gameplay was narrow and non linear. It helped lead the way for future adventures.
Games I need to play:
Without Commander Keen, we wouldnt be fortunate to live in this area of indie action platformers. Examples are Skul, Dead Cells, Bloodstained: Cursed of the Moon, Silk Song, and Hades. All solid games, but some of them take a giant wall of inspiration.
I am fortunate to come along and buy the collection again and just trying to go through each episode as they are. Episode 6 will be the toughest to find because it has exclusive publishing rights that were never moved out between iD software and the other company.
Where it stopped:
The Commander Keen series stopped in 2001. They licensed the game to be developed on Game Boy Color and it was Activision that took charge on finishing this. Eventually they did release another game. This was a spiritual sequel of Commander Keen, making references of the older games.
What now:
Because the Commander Keen IP is stuck, there are some options. You can buy the entire series on GoG.com or Steam with the Commander Keen pack. This gets you episodes one to 5. Keen Dreams and Keen 6 are the main games that are separate and distributed separately with a different story in each of them.
The other option is playing the fan made games. There is an unofficial Universe is Toast trilogy that represents a storyline that iD software dropped only after the first five games were selling.
As of now, I have the first five games, but in order to own all of them, I will have to use third party program or eBay to find Keen 6.
Whatever happens, I have my start with Commander Keen and here’s hoping I can find a trail that leads from the most recent games to either Game Boy Color or back on Steam.
Charle Subketkaew is a passionate gamer, storyteller, and daydreamer. When he's not immersed in a fresh new video game, he also enjoys creating art, graphic design, spending time with friends, watching movies or anime, listening to a podcast or custom playlist, writing, collecting, working out, and scouting out his next weekend adventure.
He runs a design page and website, Fortis Ideas. This is an evolution of his design and media career over the span of a decade. He works with different creators in different disciplines on a multitude of projects to push himself to create new ideas.
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