Oh, the memories. What impressed me most back then was that this was the first time I ever saw an idle animation. If you didn’t move for a while Commander Keen would sit down and read a book 🤯
this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
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What, read a book? Don't they, like, have a smartphone? Commander Been they are.
Boulder dash from 1984 had it, too. The character would tap its foot if idle.
There was something so magical about the shareware version of this. I remember spending a bunch of time just on the little brick breaker mini game.
My grandmother actually introduced my brother and I to Commander Keen! She was a teacher at the time and had a pretty good grasp on computers when many had never even interacted with one in person. Whenever we went to their house, we always wanted to play on her computer. It made our Nintendo seem like a toy in comparison. She even had some other games too including Quasimodo and another one i could swear was called Arabian or Arabian Nights...
Shareware really was so cool back then 😎 happy memories!
The platforming mechanics aged like milk btw.
The pogo stick was... interesting
Those games made me want to get a real pogo stick. I still have it lying around somewhere.
Please, think of your knees before you find it
I think we only had the shareware version, not the full one. I remember the screenshots from the full version when you completed it, and really wanted to play the rest!
I honestly didn't play any non-RPGs on the PC until a couple of years ago.
I finally tried Commander Keen after it was compared to Nintendo Super Mario Bros 3.
It did not age like Super Mario Bros 3. At all.
This game was hard AF.
I’ve lived my entire life reading about this in Masters of Doom but never seeming a single screenshot.
The second screenshot in the article is not from keen 1, it'd be 4,5, or 6. There was an engine revamp.
I played it, wasn't very good really somewhat repetitive and lacked a hook.
There is a whole fictional language in the game.
I remember playing this in the early 90s from a shareware cd, but even then I didn't really think much of it. Compared to platformers on consoles, even older ones from the NES, it just seemed like it wasn't on the same level somehow. A lot of that might have to do with the horrible experience of trying to play it on a keyboard, though.