Commander Keen 5: The Armageddon Machine

Alternate ending

There is an alternate ending for this game. If you can get to the Secret Korath III Base, you'll find a fuse which can be broken by pogo-ing on it. Thus when the shikadi try to escape in the end, a different page appears that tells you their ship didn't start and they were arrested by the Korath III police for double parking.

Development

Even though there is a Commander Keen 6: Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter!, Commander Keen 5: The Armageddon Machine was created after that one, because of the lead time required to launch at retail.

CGA version

As with the previous title in the series, a CGA exclusive version of the game exists, although it's extremely difficult to find.

CGA Composite

In 2016 VileR released an unofficial patch that allowed the CGA version of the game to use the CGA Composite mode. This results in CGA 16 colors graphics, as opposed of the CGA 4 color graphics of the original release.

References

• There are several jokes in the game that relate back to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. According to the book, a nice hot cup of tea is said to be a Brownian Motion inducer. One level is called the "Brownian Motion Inducer". When you get to the machine at the end of the level, you can see a cup of tea being stirred inside.
• Featured in the game are small green bottles of liquid that when you pick up they say 'v'... This refers to the fictitious energy drink Vitalin that Tom Hall created. Years later, Vitalin was used in John Romero's Ravenwood Fair game.

Swastika

Another easter egg (but far more controversial) which can be found only on some versions is the representation of a swastika with pipes. This can be found on level 4 (go down the 1st pole, then left, then right after the short drop and finally look down (press down)) and was immediately deleted of all subsequent versions (although some say it resurfaced when GT re-released the series).

Information also contributed by John Romero, WildKard, xofdre and Zovni