Commander Keen is a side-scrolling platform video game developed by David A. Palmer Productions and published by Activision in May 2001 for the Game Boy Color. Part of the Commander Keen series, it was released ten years after the first seven episodes in 1990–91. The game follows the titular Commander Keen, an eight-year-old child genius, as he journeys through three alien worlds to collect three plasma crystals to prevent the weapon they power, built by several enemies from previous games, from destroying the universe. The game features Keen running, jumping, and shooting through various levels while opposed by aliens, robots, and other hazards.
The original games of the Commander Keen series were developed by id Software, but after the success of their 3D first-person shooters such as Wolfenstein 3D (1992) and Doom (1993), they canceled the planned future episodes in the series. In 1999, founder John Carmack remarked that he was considering making a Game Boy Color game for the series, and sometime afterwards id approached Activision with the idea. Activision recommended David A. Palmer Productions to develop the game, as they had been proposing to make Game Boy Color versions of id's other games, and Palmer proceeded to make the game with oversight from id. The game was announced in April 2001 and released soon after. It received mixed reviews from critics, who gave varied opinions on the quality of the game's graphics and the suitability of the ten-year-old computer-based gameplay on a modern handheld game console, and generally found the game best suited for fans of the original series or younger players.
Gameplay
Commander Keen is a side-scrolling platform video game: the majority of the game features the player-controlled Commander Keen viewed from the side while moving on a two-dimensional plane. The player can move left and right and can jump, and can use a pogo stick to bounce continuously and jump higher than they can normally with the correct timing. The levels are composed of platforms on which Keen can stand, viewed from the side as in the original Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons trilogy, and some platforms allow Keen to jump up through them from below.
The game also includes moving platforms and teleporters that Keen can respectively jump on and interact with. In between levels, the player travels on a two-dimensional map, viewed from above; from the map, the player can enter levels by approaching the entrance. Once entered, the only way to exit a level is to reach the end, or by resetting the game. When a level is completed, the player is given a password that records their progress, lives, and points; this password is entered when starting the game in order to resume where the player left off. The game is divided into three worlds, connected by a central hub area where the game begins and where Keen starts whenever a password is entered.
The levels contain a variety of enemies, which the player must stun, destroy, or avoid; these are primarily different alien creatures. Levels can also include hazards, such as spikes or fire; touching a hazard or most enemies causes Keen to lose a life, and the game is ended if all of Keen's lives are lost. The game features three difficulty settings, which change the number and types of enemies present. While the raygun in Vorticons killed enemies, and the stun gun in Goodbye, Galaxy and Aliens Ate My Babysitter permanently stunned them, Keen's Neural Ray Blaster in this game only temporarily stuns enemies, who must then be jumped on with the pogo stick to be killed or destroyed. Stunned enemies can be bypassed until they wake up again, and unlike prior games the blaster does not require collectible ammo, though only one shot can be fired at a time. The player can also find food items throughout the levels which grant points, with an extra life awarded with enough points. There are also items which award an extra life once enough have been collected, colored keycard gems which grant access to locked parts of levels, and items which instantly grant an extra life.
Plot
In the prologue to the game, as detailed in the game's manual, eight-year-old child genius Billy Blaze is preparing to eat his cereal and watch television when the set displays nothing but static. A sub-space anomaly has mysteriously appeared in the Earth's core, and is disrupting life all over the planet. Donning his helmet as Commander Keen, Billy rushes off to discover what is affecting the Earth. He flies to the source, only to discover that the Shikadi from Goodbye, Galaxy, the Bloogs from Aliens Ate My Babysitter, and his "old enemies" the Droidicus—not present in a previous game—have joined forces and are working with his arch-rival Mortimer McMire. Together they created the Omegamatic Warp Drive, powered by three plasma crystals, to destroy the universe. Keen immediately sets off to find the crystals on the three planets linked to the Omegamatic: Droidicus Prime, Shikadi, and Fribbulus Xax.
Upon retrieving all three plasma crystals and destroying the Omegamatic Warp Drive, Keen is confronted by McMire, who tells him that he will not be so lucky the next time before teleporting away; Keen responds that he still defeated McMire, and will make it home in time for dinner. The game then congratulates the player on winning, and warns that with McMire still at large, Keen never knows when he will be called on again to defend the Earth.
