Commander Keen is the platform-game series that helped id Software and Apogee build their early audience. The original Invasion of the Vorticons trilogy appeared in December 1990. Its first episode could be copied and shared; players paid for the remaining adventures.
You control Keen through side-scrolling stages reached from a world map. The first episode’s help screen explains the essentials: jump, fire a charged raygun, and use the pogo stick once you have found it. Matching coloured keycards open doors. Completing a location lets you move farther across the map.
A world that keeps moving
The scrolling mattered on an EGA-equipped PC. In its anniversary account, the publisher describes John Carmack’s smooth-scrolling work as the technology behind the project. It allowed the scene to travel with the player, supporting a kind of platform adventure strongly associated with consoles.
The same account credits Tom Hall with the story, John Romero with development alongside Hall and Carmack, and Adrian Carmack with artwork. They worked at Softdisk during the game’s development; the publisher dates id’s formal establishment to February 1991. The game therefore precedes the company’s formal founding.
An episode is a complete invitation
Keen’s shareware structure let someone play a substantial part before deciding whether to order more. Copying the first episode helped it find its next player. Apogee supplied the route from that freely shared game to a paid continuation.
Later Keen games expanded the series, but their technology and publishing arrangements differ. The preserved source for Keen Dreams, for example, documents its own EGA and CGA versions. It supplies a view into that particular game; it does not describe every detail of the original trilogy.
Wolfenstein 3D would carry id and Apogee’s episodic distribution into a different kind of space: corridors seen through the player’s eyes.
Sources
- Commander Keen, Episode One help screen: Original in-game instructions transcribed by PCjs from the preserved version 1.1 release; controls, world map and keycards.
- 3D Realms, A Look Back at Commander Keen: Publisher’s tenth-anniversary retrospective, with Adrian Carmack and Joe Siegler recollections; preserved copy of the original 3D Realms page.
- Commander Keen in Keen Dreams source release: README identifies the separate Keen Dreams game and EGA/CGA build history.