It’s been 14 long years since our second Keen trilogy but these ended up being the best Keens of all. Unfortunately, we had a publishing deal that forced us to release one of the three Keens at retail thus breaking up the sacred trilogy of games which resulted in lower sales of this second trilogy.
The retail game was called Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter! (it was numbered Keen6) and stood on its own. Then the game duo we called Goodbye, Galaxy! had Keens 4 and 5 in it. Keen 4 took 3 months to develop, then we made Keen 6 in order to get it in the stores for Christmas and that took 2 months to make, and finally my favorite Keen, Keen 5, took us only ONE MONTH to develop. Apogee Software released the duo into shareware on December 15, 1991 while Keen 6 was in the stores.
KEEN TRIVIA:
You can see the second-oldest id Software logo on the Keen 6 box. The oldest id logo was in the help section of the original Keen 1-3 games. The “Lost Keen” came before the two Keen trilogies and was called Keen Dreams and was published by Softdisk in May 1991.
Anyone paying close attention to the Keen series will see some interesting parallels between the two trilogies. Both Keens 1 & 4 take place on friendly planets, Keens 2 & 5 take place docked onto an alien spaceship, and Keens 3 & 6 take place on hostile alien planets.
If you look closely at the Keen 5 title art you’ll see Keen running away from a Robo Red but through the window of the space station you can see the secret level on the surface of the planet.
When we were developing Keens 4-6 we were living in Madison, Wisconsin in the freezing winter and worked constantly because it was so awful outside. Cops were frequently busting down the doors next door. It was such a bad neighborhood that we were basically developing our games out of a crackhouse!
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Man, those Keen series ROCKS!
I loved them. And Keen started everything.. ID’s story is unbelieveable.. You guys really done something.
Skulltag Rulez!
BTW: Me and my friend planning to play coop-Doom 1 in Christmas Eve. We done Doom 2 some weeks ago, so it’s time for the 1st one
-SX-
Happy Birthday Keen!
I remember when I’ve buyed a special demo cd with some Id Software games, like DooM Shareware, Wolf 3D, and Commander Keen Goodbye Galaxies… My first cd entered in my first PC
Long live Commander Keen!
Hey, John. This has nothing to do with Commander Keen, although that was an awesome game anyways… just decided to visit your site. I recently read the Masters of Doom, which kinda inspired me, to say the least. I want to have the life that you do. Doom, Commander Keen, Daikatana, all awesome. I just wanted to pay my respects to you… you could be considered a gaming idol, at least in my eyes. You rock, man.
-Mat
I’ve always liked Commander Keen. It’s a shame that the only new Keen we’ve gotten in the past ten years was that crappy movie.
Editorial: Warner Bros “Commander Keen: The Movie” is an insult to gamer heritage.
I love the city of Madison.
Thanks for the greatest game ever, comander keen was the first game I ever played, and it still going strong, it’s sutch a fun and exiting game, well they all are, Oki have a nice day…Humm.. I think I shall go and play Keen 4 e Ega collors, thats was a long time ago
Rocco.