Commander Keen 1: Marooned on Mars

The Good
Before they came out with the popular first-person shooter, Wolfenstein 3D, id Software made a trilogy of platform games that centers on eight-year-old Billy Blaze, an ordinary school kid who creates an interstellar spaceship, which he calls his “Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket”, using objects he finds around his house. He dons his brother’s helmet, and transforms into Commander Keen. The first episode, entitled ‘Marooned on Mars’, has Keen exploring the red planet to recover four vital components to his ship that the inhabitants stole while he is out exploring.

Therefore, the object of this Commander Keen episode is to recover all four parts scattered around Mars. When you begin the game, you are presented with a top-down view of the planet, in which you walk along a pre-defined path until you come across a building. Entering it gives you a side view where you need to get your hands on a raygun and get to the exit. Some areas of the building are locked behind colored doors, meaning you also need to collect keycards corresponding to that color.

There are two common lifeforms on the planet, and the first type you will encounter are the Yorps, friendly, one-eyed aliens that Keen eventually takes a liking to. They have the habit of getting in your way (especially in narrow gaps), even pushing you off the platform you are on. One way of dealing with them is by jumping on their heads to immobilize them for a few seconds. They make this cute sound as they go down. Then, you have the Gargs, who are much bigger than the Yorps. They walk around flashing their teeth. Like Yorps, they stop to survey their surroundings, and they charge at Keen when they spot him. Contact with a Garg results in a loss of life and a kick to the overhead view.

Once you have left that one building, a blue square with the word “Done” in huge letters take its place, and you can proceed on. Occasionally, there are shrines that you can enter. In these levels, you make your way to the top, avoiding hazards and enemies, and touching a Yorp statue which gives Keen a telepathic message. One of these hints is about the Standard Galactic Alphabet, the strange symbols you see throughout the game. An earlier shrine lets you retrieve a pogo stick, enabling Keen to get to places he is unable to reach by foot. The pogo is carried over to the rest of the series.

Also scattered around the buildings are various items that add to your score. The most common of these are lollypops, but you can also collect soda cans, pizza slices, textbooks, and teddy bears. Get enough of them, and you might earn an extra life. But if you happen to lose a life, you have to collect them again.

There is no background music while you are playing the game, but the sound effects are nice. You hear Keen's footsteps exactly as you should (both on the map and the normal levels.) The pistol sounds like a cartoon laser gun, and when Keen uses his pogo stick, it makes a nice boing. The sound of Keen dying is good, too. I love the way that Keen looks when he is hit, losing his whole torso, his legs still walking, and his mouth formed into an O-shape.

The controls are easy to use. Only one key can be pressed to make Keen jump, another to activate his pogo stick, and another to bring up the status panel which reveals your score, the number of lives, keycards that you have collected, and more. Before the game, I enjoyed reading the in-game story and watching the static previews of the next two episodes.

The Bad
When you are playing the normal levels, there is always that bland gray background that does not go well with me at all. It can get boring at times.

As I said earlier, you have to press a key to bring up the status panel which shows a lot of information. It would have been nice if that information would be displayed while you are playing the game, and to not have to press a key at all.

In order to fire your pistol, you have to press two keys: [Ctrl] and [Alt] at the same time. Since you are jumping or using your pogo stick most of the time, you may accidentally fire your pistol.

All these problems are rectified in the future Keen games.

The Bottom Line
Commander Keen is episode one of a great series. It may have the simple plot of retrieving stuff for your gizmo, but it is better than the games that involve you rescuing a damsel-in-distress. This game is ancient, but id did not throw in some timer problems, and that means that you will not have a problem running the game on modern systems. If you like platform games, especially the ones that involve you walking around a map and traveling to your next destination, then you won't go wrong with this one.

The Good
First of all, it was (and still is) absolutely free ! Because the game was shareware, this first episode was kindly given to you, in hope that you would buy episode 2 and 3 (you still can!).
Second, if my memory serves me weel, it was one of the first scrolling platform games on the PC.
The gameplay was correct, with several nice features not so commonly seen : the pogo, allowing you to make giant jumps, but which can be controlled in a more difficult way (this is intended, not a control bug !). And also, some ennemies would just push you, sometimes into deadly traps, instead of killing you on contact.
Graphics were more than decent, with funny ennemies and some pieces of nice animation.

The Bad
While most of the graphics were decent, there is no real background to speak of, but this was addressed in the following episodes.
While the gameplay was generally good, it also introduces the "find the yellow key to open the yellow door" trick that would faithfully appear in just about every apogee platform game. While this is not really a commander keen's problem, this is the start of a habit that gets nasty after ten games.
The lastability of the game is abysmal as it can be completed in 2 hours. This, though, is a problem you can easily forgive, as this first episode is kind of a free teaser for the following games in the serie. However, I have no idea if further episodes suffer from the same shortness.

The Bottom Line
Commander Keen is certainly a game to be admired : it was one of the first (and still rare) successful shareware game. It also was a technical achievement, with its scrolling platform action. But, as far as pure gameplay pleasure is concerned, Commander Keen is slightly more than average. A game to be respected for sure. Knowing wether it has to be worshipped is open to debate.

The Good
Cute and colorful graphics. The gameplay was also great for it's time. Smooth scrolling gameplay was never (or at least not that I now of) seen before in platform games on the PC. Some cool innovations such as a pogo stick to jump higher made this game an instant classing. The gameplay was similar to that of Super Mario Bros. at some points, but it was not just another attempt to clone that game. The story was different from the classic "save the princess" formula. You are eight year old genius Billy Blaze and must stop the Vorticans from destroying earth. Billy travels to Mars in this first episode in a trilogy (this game was one of the first that were distributed following the infamous "get part one free as shareware and get the sequels too by buying them" idea that was used in a lot of Apogee games and many publishers have copied). On Mars his ship gets sabotaged by the Vorticans and now you need to collect the stolen parts to repair the ship and help keen continue his adventures. This story was quite original at that age.

The Bad
Some things are a bit dated now such as finding keys to put in the corresponding doors and the gameplay doesn't also quite do the job anymore after 15 years. When this game was released it didn't really have notable flaws, however.

The Bottom Line
Though this game is a bit too dated at certain points it's still a brilliant game that is still free available as shareware and you can still buy it's sequels. If you are looking for a good classic platformer on the PC, you may want to pick this one up.

The Good
Commander Keen is arguably a legend by now, one of the first really stellar games published by Apogee and famed developers id. The concept is super-simple and fits perfectly for these games: Billy Blaze, eight years old genius, builds himself a functioning spaceship and after donning his brother's football helmet and calling himself "Commander Keen" the biggest badass in space, decides to explore the stars looking for adventure. His adventures would eventually take him on 7 sequels and around some of the weirdest planets in the universe, but seeing as how this was the first shareware release, Keen just decided to take a trip to Mars. What he finds there goes beyond that stupid face, and he encounters the evil Vorticons, which have stolen key parts off his spaceship. Mission? Get the parts back and leave Mars before mom finds out you are gone!

The gameplay of Keen is that of a standard platform game in which you jump around a lot grabbing items, avoiding enemies and clearing insanely twisting levels filled with all sorts of platforms, columns, blocks, etc... You also have a lot of key-card collecting and some levels require more thought that just "getting all the way to the right-side of the level" but that's as far as it goes. While this alone would have meant a "Dear god, not ANOTHER Mario Clone!" from almost anyone, two key factors saved it from that abyss: first the undeniable charm present in the game with it's wacky yet cuddly story, cute colorful graphics, and inventive levels. The other saving factor was that it was for the pc. Yes, FOR THE PC!!! Holy Shit! You mean PCs can handle smooth scrolling and all that jumping-shooting action and not explode?? Yup. Goodbye Nes, I won't miss you... well maybe a little but just until they find a way to emulate Metroid and Zelda...

The Bad
Well, while most of my memories are laced with the sweet smell of nostalgia, I still consider that there were very few flaws in the Keen series overall and practically none in this first release. The backgrounds needed some work for this first CK, and the mixing of the jump, pogo and fire controls was kinda awkward, but overall this is an absolutely solid game whose only other flaws are those defined by its genre.

The Bottom Line
Anyway, very entertaining levels, great graphics, silky-smooth scrolling and no peyote-eating plumbers in sight!! That spells golden for me!

Really, I can trace this game to many childhood memories of my past. Clearly being amongst the kickass games that definetively grounded me into PC-gaming first and foremost since it was one of those games that proved that consoles just weren't any magic boxes and anything they did the pc could do better. :)) Ya!...but even if I am one rambling idiot and consoles are king of the hill, the fact remains that CK is a very very good platformer game.

The Good
Commander Keen was so well-programmed that my jaw dropped the first time I saw it. (This has always been a trend with Carmack & Romero games--the same happened when I saw Wolfenstein 3D, then Doom, then Quake.) Commander Keen uses hardware scrolling and virtual screen tricks to provide very smooth scrolling platform gameplay on any 286 or faster with an ega card. That, coupled with the cute, early kid comic-book-style graphics, makes it just as good (if not better) than most console platformers on Nintendo 8-bit platforms.

The PC speaker sound effects are better than average.

The Bad
The gameplay gets pretty repetitive after a while (which is dangerous, since repetition == boredom).

The Bottom Line
A classic game that should be played by anyone who enjoys console platform games. And for extra punch, play it on a real 286 with EGA as a testament to how well it's programmed.

The Good
The first game in the opening trilogy. You got this game free, and then had to buy the next two. Let's just say that this was good enough to make me splash out on parts 2 & 3. It was a natural succesor to Captain Comic, but a much better game.

The graphics were good - very clear and easy on the eyes. The PC speaker sounds were cute and very well done for the time. The story was invloving and the puzzles were tricky without being frustrating.

The Bad
The control system was poor. Your Jump and Pogo buttons were CTRL and ALT. Your fire was CTRL+ALT. This made running, jumping and pogoing a hit a miss affair as you charged down the corridor only to find yourself wasting ammo rather than jumping the tricky ravine.

The Bottom Line
In every way a classic. Obviously it was vastly inferior to the later CK games with the new engine (CK4 onwards), but for a long time it captivated me like few other games have managed.

The Good
Apogee has always had a place in my heart with their games. Tom Hall, John Romero, and John Carmack have always been involved with making the best games ever made. Commander keen is no different and with Romero and Carmack's increadible coding "skillz" they produced a game that was fun and no eyecandy.. A major plus that seems to be lacking from most all of today's games (the most fun I've had recently has been Half-Life, and the game play of HL can't hold a candle to Commander Keen). Little Billy Blaze will have you staring at your moniter for hours playing through a broad spectrum of levels.

The light-hearted graphics and animations look like someone actually took the time to sketch out and draw what they wanted...they didn't just ley 3D Studio MAX do it for them. The other nice feature is the puzzles. Simple, straight foward, thinking puzzles, unlike many new 3D action games whos puzzles consist of finding new wepons to blow more stuff up(and even still, those puzzles are long, tedious, treks through nowhere [ie: the lame mario like jumping thing in HL]).

The Bad
There hasn't been a sequel in 5 years....

The Bottom Line
I'd rather play Commander Keen to any game I've seen newer than 1995... (except the occasonial Half-Life Lan Party..)

The Good
The one good thing about Commander Keen (and its myriad sequels) was that it broke the mold for PC games- I feel it's somewhat responsible for the explosion of PC gaming. It introduced console-style action games (and, more importantly, the scrolling platform game) to PC users.

The Bad
Commander Keen, looked at in the context of late-80s platformer games, as opposed to compared to other PC games, is a very poor game. The graphics are bland, the gameplay is boring... and it demonstrates how ill-suited the PC was for action games... a trend that continues to this day, with the PC dominating strategy games, and consoles dominating action games.

The Bottom Line
Commander Keen was a huge success, and was a very heavily hyped side-scrolling game in the vein of Super Mario Bros. At the time of its release, it was considered the successor to Captain Comic and one could not avoid mention of the game in PD/SW software catalogues and BBSes. It was designed for mid-to-high spec machines of the time, and was considered something of a wonder.

CK, in my opinion, plays like one of the many boring SMB clones that came out on the NES. The game physics are tolerable, the gameplay is repetitive and somewhat on the slow side. The graphics are average- poor in comparison to any game on any other platform of the time, but for the PC it was decent.

At the time of its release, I was a big Commodore 64/128 user- the Great Giana Sisters and Creatures were 2 hugely popular platformers from the same era, and I played them incessantly. Perhaps the C64's colorful graphics and suitability for action games jaded my eye, because I couldn't believe how utterly lame CK was. After all the hype, the $2000 PC was playing a game technologically inferior to a game played on a $99 C64, let alone the $99 NES and SMS, whose games were responsible for CK.

In the long run, of course, the PC platform has proven itself. Games like CK are responsible- the games necessitated the upgrading and outfitting of PC systems in order to play them properly, lifting the PC market out of the CGA 4.77 mHz rut it'd been in since 1983. Historically the game is important, and I keep a copy on my HD... but it isn't really on a par with any of the other platform games from the same era, and was very quickly superseded in quality and gameplay by other PC games.