Commander Keen Trilogy Completed…Sort of.

For many, the name Commander Keen strikes a chord as a childhood memory. As children of the 80s and 90s, many of us remember the story of 8-year old boy genius Billy Blaze AKA “Commander Keen” who comes to save the world from certain doom in numerous circumstances. Unfortunately even with big cliffhanger at the end of Keen 6, ID and Apogee moved on to other games and never continued the series…

Back in December Tom Hall, the original creator of Commander Keen posted on his website that the old game has now turned 20 years old. Tom Hall has stated many times, that if ID software would give him the creative property rights to Keen, he would definitely make a new Commander Keen game. Hopefully someday that will happen, but for now a rabid Keen fan has given us a cool slice of nostalgia. Ceilick, a member of the Commander Keen modding community has just released the final piece of his unofficial “Universe is Toast” trilogy. The games are mods of Commander Keen 4, 5 and 6 and use the same game engine and feature a unique new story, music, world maps and everything!

Until or if we ever get a new official Keen game release maybe these mods can give us a bit of Keen closure. The future of Commander Keen is still unset, and we don’t know whats going to happen. Tom Hall stated something interesting on this website concerning Keen:

“If I turn 50 and haven’t gotten him back, I will tell the story in some form, and let him go…”
-Tom Hall

So we just have to sit back and see what happens next. For now, here are the links for the mods:

- Commander Keen 7: The Keys of Krodacia
- Commander Keen 8: Dead in The Desert
- Commander Keen 9: Battle of the Brains

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Tags: Commander Keen, Windows Games

This entry was posted on Monday, March 7th, 2011 at 08:00 and is filed under Classic Game Sequels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

http://www.OldGamesNews.com Niklas

I just love Commander Keen. Played it for hours and hours as a kid, never played the mods though. Might have to pick up on those! And yay for our first guest author Megaman!
http://www.oldgamesnews.com Abandonman

If I recall it right, Commander Keen was one of the first 3 games that found their pirated way to my 420MB HHD in 1994. Along with Lemmings 2 the Tribes and… what was it called… something with flipping or falling bricks.. don’t remember the name, Lemmings were so much better.
http://www.oldgamesnews.com Abandonman

It was that ant in Pushover, now i remember.
Megaman_90

Yay its up! The mods are pretty good, although I have not finished the last one yet. I love Keen, it was actually one of the first PC games I played(back in the Win 3.1 days).

It will hold a special place in my heart forever.