Commander Keen Episode 1: Marooned on Mars (1990) [MS-DOS]

In the first game, Keen is exploring on Mars when aliens steal four spaceship components that he must get back. In this episode, Keen acquires his trademark pogo stick and meets a variety of Martian aliens and robots. The aliens are the Vorticons, a fierce dog-humanoid race that had an outpost on Mars. Keen travels through different Martian cities, and eventually recovers all the missing parts. However, when Keen gets back to Earth, he finds the Vorticon mothership looming over the planet, with its cannons ready to attack.
Commander Keen is a series of video games developed by id Software in the early 1990s. The series focuses on the adventures of Billy Blaze, an 8-year old boy who travels through space and assumes the identity "Commander Keen". The series was successful at replicating the side-scrolling action of the Nintendo Entertainment System Super Mario Bros. games in DOS. The cartoon-style platform games are notable for their pioneering use of EGA graphics and shareware distribution, and they were some of the first games by id Software (which went on to develop blockbusters like Doom and Quake). The games were also exciting to the PC gaming community of the time because of John D. Carmack's smooth-scrolling graphics engine. Although developed by id, most of the Commander Keen games were published by Apogee Software, an already established DOS shareware game publisher. Tom Hall is Commander Keen's designer and the creator of its universe.

[@pineappletoast2142]

This game is legit my childhood holy crap

[@PieFights]

This folks is the Keen that started it all

[@tigertie7701]

The blue dog used to scare me so. And the green aliens with the googly eyes. Basically the monsters scared me lol. Nostalgia at it's finest. ☺️

[@planetX15]

The "blue dog" was called a Vorticon Guard and those green aliens with one eye were called Yorps, and the bigger alien with the two eyes were called Gargs

[@Starchaser38]

Ah, the difference of perception at its finest - I used to laugh a lot upon seeng those ridiculously awesome designs 😂

[@ing_frantisek_mohykan]

it is a wolf!

[@sweetestperfection90]

It's nice to see all those beautiful levels being played through. Some of which I haven't seen in almost a decade. Maybe I'll do a playthrough sometime with a voiceover, describing how obscure corners of Dark-Side-Of-Mars levels have lodged in the deepest recesses of my childhood mind.

[@therealseanw.stewart2071]

To this day, I still hear these sound effects in the back of my head. (Partly because there is no music!) The sounds kind of remind me of the arcade games of the 80s.

[@paulpatti5854]

Nice to see someone remember this game :)

[@MrJed454]

Good times. Both G-O-D, and C-T-Spacebar cheats are still engraved in my mind

[@EddieGaster]

I like how the ending sets up the next episode.

[@TheLambdaTeam]

Those small huts with the dark atmosphere reminded me of Super Mario underground levels

[@Dosgamert]

Love it how you're browsing through my channel!

[@TheLambdaTeam]

@@Dosgamert Are you jokin'!? I _love_ old DOS games! Although graphically inferior, they were a trillion times moar challenging than today's "press any key to win" games.

[@Dosgamert]

@@TheLambdaTeam keep on going man!!

[@janeiro301]

Haha randomly i found a video about minecraft enchanting language and found the name of this game that i played as a child, for so long i tried finding it xD

[@ericsaresky6246]

Crap. I forgot about this game. I know I still have the 3.5” floppy and envelope it was shipped in but need to find a computer with a 3.5” Drive. 😄

[@Dosgamert]

You can order a USB Floppy drive online for $15!

[@therealhardrock]

So this was apparently the first PC game where the programmers figured out how to do smooth scrolling.

[@TechnologicallyTechnical]

+therealhardrock One programmer specifically, John Carmack, who would go on to do much, much more for PC gaming technology.

[@josephfrye7342]

this is the original version we know its a dos version but no modded or anything from that.

[@grzegorzmartyniak288]

Bohater ostatniej akcji

[@evmergingdarkness5028]

Great Gameplay!

[@ekaterinalekkas2356]

Yep!

[@druckerman247]

Oh the command prompt.

[@Dosgamert]

I always try to show those too, even the endscreen whenever I can.

[@gsestream]

keen jumps like a rabbit or a locust

[@Twenteeeee]

I play it on Commander genius because every time I play on dos the screen flips because I press ctrl Alt to shoot and I can't rebind the keys because the steam version doesn't come with a setup file

[@TeagueChrystie]

Oh my god.

[@ekaterinalekkas2356]

😊

[@ackman3981]

Back when people did not need 4k, over 60fps to have fun. And not need megs of memory and horrendous drive space just to install it.

[@godmodeheroes3408]

How do you record this game? I can't get OBS to work with it.

[@Dosgamert]

Are you using DosBox?

[@godmodeheroes3408]

@@Dosgamert Current version for the Commander Keen Collection

[@Dosgamert]

@@godmodeheroes3408 not sure if that's a yes or a no, but you can try Dosbox' capture module

[@godmodeheroes3408]

@@Dosgamert I hear that the videos come out in a terrible quality and in a format not supported by modern computers. I did manage to find that changing the output to opengl might help with OBS footage detection. Now I just need to try different capture settings.

[@Dosgamert]

@@godmodeheroes3408 That's why you should install the ZMBV that Dosbox comes with, they're even available for 64 bit. The output of the Dosbox capture is 1:1. It's 100% accuare, no compression and small files. You can convert them to a higher resolution with a program like virtualdub. That's what I did on this video too.

[@grzegorzmartyniak288]

Reality or real time

[@ing_frantisek_mohykan]

commandant kohn

[@sarpsarp8987]

How did id software made it in 1990 before it were founded in 1991?

[@ing_frantisek_mohykan]

man, they were extremely talented

[@Kazuo1G]

John Romero, Adrian Carmack, John Carmack, and Tom Hall all worked for a computer magazine called "Softdisk".

[@Spartanhero613]

you can read the full story in "masters of doom" if you want, but basically they were all conspiring to quit their parent company and form their own at this point in time. before formally founding the business "id software", they worked out a deal to publish this game with apogee as "ideas from the deep". this is technically illegal, but they honestly worked things out with their actual employers at softdisk and settled things without having to go to court over it

[@sarpsarp8987]

@@Kazuo1G But it says ID Software in games in 1990

[@planetX15]

​@@Spartanhero613Very very interesting, I'm glad it all worked out

[@therealhardrock]

How do you say your user name? "Dahs gay mert?"

[@Dosgamert]

Like that, but quick - without the emphesys on gay.

[@therealhardrock]

@@Dosgamert "So it's "gay-mert" not "gay-mer-tee?"

[@Dosgamert]

@@therealhardrock dos gamert or dos gamer t will do. My real name is Bart (from the Netherlands). More about the origins of the name (since 2007] can be read about on dosgamert.com/story

[@therealhardrock]

@@Dosgamert Dus het is een Nederlands ding? Of iets Rotterdams?

[@Dosgamert]

@@therealhardrock yeah

[@BroDude0]

Bro you are not good at this game

[@Dosgamert]

Ik wil het je graag beter zien doen