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[rtcn63]

The folks who participated in the GOG limited sale sure do.

I watched LGR's spotlight on one of the games recently, I like the psychedelic colors. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scC5hbMQYlE

 

[PlumCantaloupe]

I do remember the freeware demo. Not too memorable but the animation was cool for the time.

 

[Prelithe]

I played 4 all the time. Grew up with a PC, and no consoles at all, so it was pretty much platformer staple.
Couldn't be bothered to replay any of them on Steam though.

Same as me. Pretty much started at 4 which to me was pretty damn solid.

 

[vocab]

I have keen.collection on steam. Haven't got around to playing it.

 

[Rizsparky]

One of my first PC games. Dat pogo stick.

 

[Alcotholic]

I never heard of it before I started watching Cosmo speed run the game. Seems interesting. Don't think I'd ever play it myself.

 

[Kyuur]

CosmoWright always does victory speedruns of one of these games after finishing his longer runs (WW). That's all I know! He finishes them so quickly.

 

[Binabik15]

The first game(s) I've really played, so yes. No idea if they were demos or pirated versions, but we had eeveral Commander Keen games on our pc. I never came far and those wolf guys or what rhey're supposed to be would probably still make me uncomfortable, I died so often to them.

The fish, though. And the green monsters that looked super weird when killed. And the sound effect when you died...is that on the internet somewhete? I now want that as a ringtone (my phone is always set to vibrate, but whatever).

 

[Clearos]

Commander Keen, 2d Duke Nukem, Jazz JackRabbit.

Some of the first games I played on dos.

 

[Silvawuff]

I love Commander Keen! I've played and finished all of them. My favorite is Keen V with the Armageddon Machine, followed by Aliens Ate My Babysitter. There was a Dopefish cameo in Quake. Keen had a very unforgiving death system, but it was soooo much fun!

There was another Keen released on a gameboy (GBC or GBA, I forget) that was wretched, but that doesn't count.

 

[PetriP-TNT]

I have played thousands of hours of these games. I bought the Keen pack from Steam some time ago but haven't got around to revisited them. It's also funny how buggy some of those games are (ie. buggy enough that you can't complete some secret endings).

I was actually looking at the uninstalled pack on my library and almost installed them. Almost.

When I was a kid I tried to copy Hocus Pocus shareware version from my friend by I couldn't because it took like 20 floppys.

I'll put this here for a reminder, install Keen tomorrow

 

[Santiako]

I was more into Hocus Pocus a few years later!

I still have my big box version of Hocus Pocus, I loved that game. I think it was my first CD game.

 

[Dreamwriter]

Commodore Amiga weren't "super expensive". They were pretty much considered the popular family/gaming computer here in Europe.
And to claim that PCs couldn't match consoles is a vague and misleading statement.

Unlike Amiga or consoles they didn't have a chipset dedicated to scrolling or hardware sprites, which is why they struggled in the platform genre, but they were obviously more powerful than the typical console in a lot of other areas, which is why you had stuff like Ultima VII (and few months later Ultima Underword) on PC.

You're talking about the future. Sure, by the time Ultima VII came out PC's were gaming beasts. But in the Commander Keen 1 era, the NES could do more colors, more effects, had hardware support for scrolling, sprites, sound and music, etc. The PC didn't come into its own for gaming until VGA (256 colors per screen!) and Sound Blaster became common.

And yes, when the Amiga first came out it was quite expensive, at $700/£500 in 1987 for the Amiga 500 without a monitor (the C64 was less than $200 by then).

 

[msdstc]

One of my favorite games as a kid, couldn't get enough of it.

 

[Sciz]

yeah, I always wonder what a 3D commander keen would be like. you know, kind of a Commander Keen 64.

That was actually Tom Hall's next idea for the series once id started doing 3D work and it was clear they weren't going back to 2D games. I'd like to see the alternate reality where Keen 7 was the first 3D platformer and id put all their time into that game instead of doing Quake. It'd be fascinating.

Commander Keen is in the same canon as Wolfenstein 3D?

Well that's... that's something!

So's DOOM, actually.

I never played it. Glad id software moved on to wolf and DOOM.

You're missing out on wonderful games by the same team of designers in their prime.

 

[Revven]

CosmoWright always does victory speedruns of one of these games after finishing his longer runs (WW). That's all I know! He finishes them so quickly.

Took too long for this to show up!

Yea, Cosmo streams Keen 4 and Keen 6. I think he's gonna be regularly streaming speedruns of Keen when he returns from AGDQ.

 

[gnomed]

sure, it came with my gravis gamepad.

Gravis Pad, we meet again.

 

[Chinbo37]

Yup back when I was a young lad getting into PC gaming. Before that i was strictly a NES guy, then got a SNES and then got into PC gaming.

That was also when they would release the first 1/3 of the game as freeware so i never ended up playing the final 2/3rds cause I could never convince my parents to pay. I would like to get those games and finally beat them

I remember he was a packers fan

 

[Ashok]

Amazing series. Still hoping John Carmack will make Commander Keen 7: The Universe is Toast. Maybe it can be an OculusVR launch title.

 

[Keen]

Well, yes.

 

[Morfeo]

I was more into Hocus Pocus a few years later!

I actually did beat this game at a time where I was stuck with nothing else to play. Pretty uninteresting and boring overall though.

 

[creyas]

Oh yeah. Going to the dentist when i was little there was a PC in the corner of the waiting room with some DOS games, i remember there being Gods, Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion and Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy.

 

[Random Painted HIghway]

sure, it came with my gravis gamepad.

I went through so many of these. Preferred jazz to keen, but I dled every shareware game the local bbs's had.

 

[SighFight]

As a lot of people here I started with and played the most of the fourth. But i later played all of them. I think 1,4 and 6 are the best. At least I remember a lot of those three.

Great memories!

 

[Kattbuss]

Damn, that brings on memories. Couldn't get one of the later ones to run without fiddling with autoexec.bat. Great games for their time.

 

[flozuki]

I was suprised that he is quiet "famous". Just scroll down to the gallery and look, what people in our city did with him. I was pretty amazed

http://postitwar.org/2014/01/10/wenn-hamburger-sich-gegenseitig-eine-kleben/

 

[Skab]

Rip

 

[DJSharpeCheddar]

I love Commander Keen. It was probably the first platformer I ever played, even before any Marios. I still play through them from time to time.

Also awesome: Duke Nukem, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventures, Raptor: Call of the Shadows, Secret Agent, Major Stryker, Monster Bash...

Apogee might be my favorite developer ever...

 

[L Thammy]

Can't say that I do. I also can't say that I ever went to the Epic MegaGames and Apogee Software websites to download shareware games such as these. Nope.

Epic's old library is mostly freeware now; I've been paying Tyrian and One Must Fall again recently. Don't think the same is true for Apogee.

 

[Buckethead]

One of my favorite games series'.

Really bummed we never got the third trilogy.

That motherfucker Mortimer needs to go down.

 

[Sajjaja]

The only thing I know about Commander Keen is that a gaffer has him as their avatar.

 

[secretanchitman]

One of my favorite games of all time, specifically CM4 - Goodbye Galaxy. Came with my brother's Gravis Gamepad if I remember correctly! That damn green/one-eyed fish always scared the crap out of me, but easily an excellent game.

I also remember in Doom 2 (DM32), at the very end of beating a cyberdemon, the next room has 4 Commander Keen bodies that you can shoot and it makes the original dying sound effect if you do kill them. Hilarious and an awesome throwback.

 

[Azure J]

Keen 4 was my first PC game. Always loved how much "better" it looked to other things (platformers) out in the PC space at the time.

 

[Teppic]

It's criminal that the collection on Steam doesn't have 6 and Keen Dreams.

Keen Dreams could be a fragment of my imagination though.

Keen 1 is the first game I ever played and it's well documented on video.

Well, Keen Dreams is a shareware episode, so you can just download it here:

http://www.classicdosgames.com/game/Keen_Dreams.html

Keen 4 is also shareware:

http://www.classicdosgames.com/game/Commander_Keen:_Goodbye_Galaxy.html

 

[TheCongressman1]

Yes. I loved Keen, and these guys too:

 

[MrCunningham]

The development of Commander Keen started with this little tech demo that John Carmack and Tom Hall made while working at a little company called Softdisk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUJ9xWw8_lQ

John Carmack developed the engine in his spare time at Softdisk as a proof of concept that smooth scrolling graphics could be achieved on an EGA adapter, which was thought to be impossible at the time. It used a graphics technique that Carmack developed called adaptive tile refresh, which only updated the notably visible tile sets.Tom Hall did all the tile art, and they used John Romero's Dangerous Dave character. They even sent this demo to Nintendo with the proposal that they could port Super Mario Bros. 3 to the PC. But of course Nintendo turned them down.

As for Commander Keen, I remember playing the Invasion of the Vorticons shareware a lot when I was younger, same goes with Goodbye Galaxy. They weren't the greatest of platformers, but I still had fun with them. Good times.

 

[test_account]

I do remember Commander Keen, but i never really played it that much. I have more fond memories of Duke Nukem 1 and 2, and Bio Menace.

I do. I forget it was done by Id before they went on to Doom. Back then PCs had to compete with the SNES and Genesis and Keen was the answer. It didn't compare at all to the console games at the time. Pretty generic and bland. Funny how now PCs are the reference platform for gaming.

I wouldnt exactly say that, at least not for the big commercial market. Consoles are being a big focus in these days as well. Tablets and phones also has a big focus, especially for the smaller developers. Personally, i feel that PC gaming was actually more of a focus before than what it is today, but that might be that i was a more active PC gamer back in the days.

 

[Poimandres]

I do. I forget it was done by Id before they went on to Doom. Back then PCs had to compete with the SNES and Genesis and Keen was the answer. It didn't compare at all to the console games at the time. Pretty generic and bland. Funny how now PCs are the reference platform for gaming.

As a Genesis owner at the time, I'm going to disagree with you. Keen 4 in particular was a pretty great game back then with decent graphics, solid mechanics, interesting level design with plenty of secrets etc. It stood up fine next to what was happening on consoles.

At that time, PC gaming was quite healthy as well with genres like RTS games, space sims and FPS games clearly outperforming console equivalents. Not much has changed, really!

 

[Nilaul]

Just like I thought the 2nd Commander Keen fixed all the annoying controls, Its still enjoyable.

 

[G-Fex]

Everyone who likes these kinds of games should give MURI that's on Steam a try.

 

[Neo Child]

Commander Keen, 2d Duke Nukem, Jazz JackRabbit.

Some of the first games I played on dos.

CRYSTAL CAVES
HALLOWEEN HARRY/ALIEN CARNAGE
WACKY WHEELS
BIONIC COMMANDO
TYRIAN
THAT ISOMETRIC GAME WITH THE RABBIT IN THE BALOON, CALLED WHIZZ MAYBE?

SECRET AGENT
MONSTER BASH

A BILLION OTHER DOS GAMES

APOGEE SOFTWARE FTW

gawd this was my childhood. my dad got loads of 'golden games' CD's, basically cd's of full dos games. ah nostalgia. the games are still great. WACKY WHEELS 2 PLAYER. i was like 5 at the time, trying to work dos with my sister getting 2players on wacky wheels running was hard.

 

[Noogy]

I was actually playing Keen last week.

I still remember how much of a revelation it was, seeing the first Commander Keen running on our family PC. While I was a big C64 and TI99/4a gamer, we didn't play many games on the PC until Keen came along.

 

[jambo]

Commander keen?

I was more into Hocus Pocus a few years later!

2D Duke Nukem

Can't say that I do. I also can't say that I ever went to the Epic MegaGames and Apogee Software websites to download shareware games such as these. Nope.

Epic's old library is mostly freeware now; I've been paying Tyrian and One Must Fall again recently. Don't think the same is true for Apogee.

My childhood!

Also a few more