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On this week’s episode of Retroquest Erron and I take a trip back to the early ’90s to discuss Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the game that we both feel represents the high water mark of the Sonic series.  Later games would start adding a ridiculously large cast of characters and suffer from blatant money grabs likethe infamous “lock on technology” that was touted as a neat feature for Sonic & Knuckles but in reality summarized everything that was wrong with Sega of America as they barreled towards the Saturn and console oblivion.  But Sonic 2 stands as a pure entry filled with welcome improvements on the first game’s mechanics and the first example of multiplayer in the series.

The podcast is available for your listening pleasure at the bottom of this post (click through if you’re on an RSS reader) or you can subscribe to the Retroquest RSS feed with your favorite podcatching software.  Retroquest is also available through iTunes.

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Presented for your listening pleasure is the first episode of the Retroquest podcast where Erron and I discuss the first Commander Keen game: Marooned on Mars. You can listen to or download the podcast directly from this page, or you can subscribe to the Retroquest feed with your podcatching software of choice.

This week’s podcast comes in at a little over twelve minutes.  We’ll be trying to keep all of our podcasts under the fifteen minute mark for future entries to save everyone’s time.  So give it a listen and let us know what you think!

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Title screen for Marooned on Mars.

I’ve completed the overview page for the Commander Keen series in the Retroquest section.  If you’d like to know a little bit more about the galaxy spanning sidescrolling PC adventure that launched the careers of John Romero and John Carmack then I’d encourage you to give it a read.  id software really is, in many ways, the house that Keen built.

But Commander Keen isn’t just a historical footnote to blockbuster games like Wolfenstein, DOOM, or Quake.  Commander Keen is more than a footnote in the history of gaming development on the PC since it was the first true sidescrolling platformer on the hardware.  Keen is more than a footnote in the history of the shareware revolution of the early 90s where game developers suddenly found themselves making oodles of money for giving away a piece of their product for free.

Commander Keen is also a damned impressive game.

Everything Keen for the DOS platform came out in the space of two short years, but in that time the design team behind the game managed to make a solid game with responsive controls, original level design, and new play mechanics like the raygun and the pogo stick that would have revolutionized the platformer had anyone outside of the small (for the time) PC gaming community taken notice.

The graphics for the first trilogy were on par with anything seen on the late-era NES when companies had learned to squeeze the most out of Nintendo’s little grey box, and the graphics on the second three-set – I hesitate to call it a trilogy since the third game wasn’t connected to the first two by any sort of narrative thread – was easily as good as if not better than anything offered up on the Genesis and the Super Nintendo in the platformer category.

That’s right.  I just threw down the gauntlet and indirectly implied that Commander Keen was as good as Sonic (not hard) and Super Mario World (a taller order).  So read about Commander Keen and maybe go download one of the shareware copies available out there on the ‘net and give it a try.

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Virtual Boy system and controller.

I’ve been on the lookout for a Virtual Boy for a few weeks now. All of the Gameboy coverage over at Retronauts this month got me to thinking about Nintendo’s red-screened stepchild, and playing through Six Golden Coins has only added to my desire to revisit Wario Land on the ‘ol VR headset.

The Virtual Boy was a much maligned system at it’s debut, and its reputation hasn’t much improved in the intervening years. Most gamers remember the system as an uncomfortable source of neck and eye strain due to the unfortunate positioning of the device’s headstand and its migraine-inducing binocular display that was born from the bastard spawn of an eye-exam machine and a foul demon intent on ruining children’s vision. Industry analysts remember it as the first chink in Nintendo’s armor as they arrogantly coasted out of the 16-bit era they had dominated into an uncertain future that would see Sony quickly claiming their throne with the Playstation.

The Virtual Boy was all of those things, but I still reserve a soft spot in my heart for the little red mutant system. I suppose it’s true that you can love almost anything viewed through the lens of indiscriminately overpowering nostalgia.

I was at a Meijer in early ‘96, my pockets were flush with Christmas cash, and the Virtual Boy, already on its deathbed so soon after its launch, was on sale for cheap. I picked up the system and two additional games for a grand total of $75. This was no small investment to a junior high kid with no steady income, but well worth it to have a fancy next generation portable system at a bargain price.

Sure the stand was a literal pain in the neck. I solved that one by playing while laying down with the stand resting on my chest and was quite comfortable. Sure the binocular viewscreen had a tendency to strain the eyes, but after adjusting it just so I found a settin I could play with no more discomfort than I’d already come to expect squinting at the blurry green postage stamp that passed for a screen on the Gameboy. And what’s more, the games were actually pretty fun, delivering a rich portable gaming experience that wouldn’t be matched until the Gameboy Advance a few years later.

Eventually I sold my Virtual Boy to my brother. I was moving away from gaming as high school and dating loomed on the horizon, and the Virtual Boy would be the last console I bought until I grabbed an old Super Nintendo in college heralding my return to console video games.

I had my brother pull the Virtual Boy out of storage this past weekend to get in a few games of Wario Land, but the right screen was ruined to the point of making games unplayable. So for now it seems that the Virtual Boy will remain in my gaming past, but it was a fun little system while it lasted, no matter what anyone else says.

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My brother and I weren’t allowed to have a Nintendo when we were young.  The only time we got a crack at the gaming system of choice back in the late 80s and early 90s was at our babysitter’s house or when we were visiting friends, and even then the selection was usually limited to mainstays like the Mario games.  One friend of mine had a copy of Castlevania that we would play into the night, but that was the extent of our Nintendo experience.

Not that my parents were video game hating luddites.  Far from it.  The simple fact was that my dad had already invested in a 286 IBM Compatible PC, a good chunk of change in the mid-80s, and they weren’t going to spend any more money on a game system when we already had a computer.  Turns out we were in luck though.  While my friends were stuck in an 8-bit era dominated by the tyranny of mediocrity that was the Official Nintendo Seal of Quality we were already enjoying the benefits of the cutting edge of gaming design, including a now little-known game called Commander Keen.

Before id Was id:

Keen was the brainchild of the id Software dream team of Tom Hall, John Carmack, and John Romero before there was an id Software and before they were THE John Carmack and John Romero.  As legend has it, Hall, Carmack, and Romero were paying the bills by designing shareware software for Softdisk when, late one night, Carmack decided to program a smooth side-scrolling clone of the first level of Super Mario Bros. 3.  This was no small feat at the time, having never been done on the PC platform before, and before you know it Hall, Romero, and Carmack rode off into the sunset, money signs in their eyes, to found id Software and go on to fabulous success in the gaming industry.

Except it wasn’t a simple drive down Easy Street for the two industry titans.  They had to work nights at Softdisk to get in any time on their own Keen project with no guarantee that any of their tinkering would ultimately pay off.  They first pitched their idea for a Mario clone to the people at Nintendo and were firmly declined by the big N.  Instead of accepting defeat, however, they decided that they’d just program their own new title.

Tom Hall's opener for Commander Keen.

Birth of a Hero

Commander Keen was born out of a combination of retro 1950s pulp science fiction, a desperate desire to break free of Softdisk, and the limitations of the contemporary computer video game industry.  Tom Hall dashed off a quick paragraph that eventually became the opening crawl for the first Keen Game: Marooned on Mars:

Billy Blaze, eight year-old genius, working diligently in his backyard clubhouse has created an interstellar starship from old soup cans, rubber cement and plastic tubing.  While his folks are out on the town and the babysitter has fallen asleep, Billy travels into his backyard workshop, dons his brother’s football helmet, and transforms into…

COMMANDER KEEN — Defender of Earth!

In his ship, the Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket, Keen dispenses galactic justice with an iron hand!

The premise was simple.  An eight year old genius travels to exotic locales, meets interesting aliens, and fries most of them with his handy blaster.  The graphics were simple in the first three games, the mechanics were a little rough around the edges, and the difficulty level in the first trilogy quickly ramped up from simple and friendly for players who were trying out the first episode as a Shareware title to an insanely painful exercise in pain that only the most masochistic gamers could ever hope to enjoy, let alone complete, by the time the third installment rolled around.  Still, the first Keen trilogy was definitely more polished than the average sidescrolling platformer on the NES at the time, and even at its most cruel the games weren’t nearly as punishing or capricious as most contemporary console titles.

So this week on Retroquest I’ll be talking about Commander Keen, defender of the galaxy and singlehanded savior of id software before it was id software.  Without Commander Keen there wouldn’t have been enough money for Hall, Romero, and Carmack to leave Softdisk and start their own gaming company.  No Keen, no DOOM, no Quake, no id.  I’m sure that industry changing developments like the first person shooter still would have come along in their own time – series such as Marathon serve as proof enough that the concept of the FPS wasn’t a divinely inspired message from above sent exclusively to id – but it is certain that the history of gaming and the development of online gaming would have looked very different in a world without id.

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