History Videogame / CommanderKeen

* AmbiguouslyJewish: Billy Blaze is heavily implied to be this, given that his grandfather, [[VideoGame/Wolfenstein3-D BJ Blazkowicz]] was of Polish-Jewish descent and his surname is driven from the Ashkenazi surname "Berkowicz", so this must be true.

* AmbiguouslyJewish: Billy Blaze is heavily implied to be this, given that his grandfather, [[VideoGame/Wolfenstein BJ Blazkowicz]] was of Polish-Jewish descent and his surname is deriven from the Ashkenazi surname "Berkowicz", so this must be true.

* AmbiguouslyJewish: Given that his grandfather was of Polish-Jewish descent and his surname "Blazkowicz" is deriven from the Askenazi surname "Berkowicz", this could be true.

* AmbiguouslyJewish: Given that his grandfather was of Polish-Jewish descent and his surname "Blazkowicz" is driven from the Askenazi surname "Berkowicz", this could be true.

* ''Keen Dreams'' (1991): A GaidenGame published by Softdisk, where Keen has a dream in which he sets out to fight Boobus Tuber, the vegetable king. The game's canon status is unknown - most fans consider it to have taken place between episodes 3 and 4. The game featured several features unique to the series, including a lack of Keen's pogo stick, and vegetables being thrown as weapons.

!! This game series has examples of:

* AirborneMook: Skypests (flies) in ''Secrets of the Oracle''; you can't shoot them, only crush them with your pogo stick when they land. The episode also has Blue Birds, which will fly at Keen to try to kill him; and they're invincible.

* BondVillainStupidity: {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d. Keen is surprised that the Gnostic Elders weren't killed instead of just being kidnapped. The council page immediately handwaves this by telling him that the elders are immortal. (Which also excuses for preventing the player accidentally - [[ForTheEvulz or not so accidentally]] - killing them.)

* CraniumRide: The series features at least two cranium-rideable creatures - the harmless though annoying red Bounder in Episode 4 and the somewhat hazardous Gik in Episode 6, which Billy can ride, but only when it is upright. If not being ridden, it will jump at Billy and slide upside-down on its shell, with lethal intent. Gik riding allows the player to cross slime puddles easily.

** Big Ben - London
** Sphinx - Cairo
** Sydney Opera House - Sydney
** Statue of Liberty - New York
** Eiffel Tower - Paris
** Colosseum - Rome
** St. Basil's Cathedral - Moscow
** White House - Washington

* FrictionlessIce: There two kinds of ice. One behaves just as you'd expect it would, reducing Keen's traction, but the other is truly frictionless - the only way to change direction on it is by [[JumpPhysics jumping off and turning around]].

** In Keen 2, there's the Scrub, a similarly harmless enemy. They can actually be helpful as they can be ridden upon to access areas you otherwise couldn't, as they can climb up walls.
** Keen 3 has the Foob, which is a tiny, very shy furball that runs away when approached and dies out of sheer fright when cornered.

** The Sparky in Keen 5. It's a black spherical robot that walks back and forth, sometimes charging at Keen similarly to the Gargs in the first game.
** Keen 6 has the Blooglets, which push Keen around like the Yorps in the first game but are faster. They come in four colors and sometimes hold keys of the same color as themselves.

* IdleAnimation: In Keen 4 - 6, Keen takes out a book to read and, in one level of Keen 4, moons the audience. In Keen Dreams, he falls asleep.

* MeaninglessLives: The series invokes this trope starting with Keen Dreams (episode 3.5), which introduced the ability to save your game anywhere and 1UP pickups to the series. The first three episodes only allowed saving on the map and only gave you extra lives every 20000 points. Being able to save your exact progress anywhere in the second half of the series renders the three methods of getting extra lives meaningless, unless you are trying to [[SelfImposedChallenge play the whole game without saving.]] For the record, the methods are every 10000*2^N points, a 1UP pickup, and collect-100-for-a-life pickups (the latter being introduced in episode 4).

* MilitaryRankNames: Billy Blaze adapts the name Commander Keen for his alter-ego. [[BerserkButton He doesn't like]] [[InsistentTerminology to be called ''Captain'' Keen]].
* MobileShrubbery: Commander Keen IV: The Secret of the Oracle has enemies that hide under boulders (much like the Toy Story 2 traffic cones). They're harmless (and well camouflaged) when stationary, but deadly when moving. And they can jump at you as if they're riding pogo sticks!

** The Arachnut and Blue Birds from ''Keen IV'' can be temporarily stunned if you shoot them with your ray gun, but never permanently killed. (Or permanently stunned. After all, the way other enemies "die" in the episodes IV - VI leaves them with stars going around their heads.) The first time you see them suddenly spring back to life is disconcerting, to say the least.

* KidsHateVegetables: What kicks off the plot of ''Kean Dreams'', as it starts with Keen getting send to bed without food after refusing his vegetables, and then gets trapped in a dreamworld where kids that refuse their vegetables are enslaved by sentient vegetables.

* OneHitPointWonder: Commander Keen takes hits just as well as you'd expect an 8-year old kid to take.

* SirCameosALot: The Dopefish, a creature who has appeared in a grand total of one game: ''VideoGame/CommanderKeen Episode IV: Goodbye Galaxy''. (And even then, he only appeared in one level, Well of Wishes.) However the creature has made cameo appearances in [[http://www.dopefish.com/fishinfo.html a lot of games]], both created by Id (or Id properties) and not.

** In order to get to a secret level in Episode 4, one must collect 12 worms together. This creates a giant foot that transports you. The fact that these must be "inch" worms is mentioned only in the help file, which even goes so far to say "Watch where you step or they'll be afoot!"

* StrangeSecretEntrance: The aptly-named "Pyramid of the Forbidden" in episode 4, reached by going into the basement of the "Pyramid of the Moons" and coercing twelve inch-worms to come together, at which point they form a [[StealthPun giant foot]] which transports Keen.

** In Secret of the Oracle, to get to a hidden pyramid Keen must let twelve inch worms gather under him to make a foot.

* DreamLand: ''Keen Dreams'' takes places entirely inside a dream world governed by sentient vegetables.

%%* EyeOnAStalk: The Martians have these.

* ''Episode 4: Secret of the Oracle'' (1991): The first part of the ''Goodbye, Galaxy!'' two-parter. After finishing a new sublight radio, Keen discovers a plot by a new alien race, the Shikadi, to take over the galaxy. He travels to the planet Gnosticus IV to consult the Keepers of the Oracle (an ancient alien race), but discovers they have been captured, and sets out to rescue them. The game featured much larger levels and a wide assortment of enemies, as well as new game mechanics and minigames.

* StunGun: Your weapon in Episodes 4 through 6. Most enemies stay "stunned" forever, though--[[OffscreenInertia or at least until after you exit the level]].

** ''Earth Explodes'' has the villains of the first episode position a planetary destruction ship in orbit over Earth. If you screw up, you get to activate it. [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Guess what happens.]]

* DamselInDistress: Molly in ''Aliens Ate My Babysitter''.

* EyeOnAStalk: The Martians have these.

** ''Commander Keen 2: The Earth Explodes'' has a rather {{JustForFun/egregious}} example in the Paris Tantalus level, where if you know how, you can get enough points to get more than one life each try, which can theoretically lead to infinite lives and infinite points. At least one level in ''3'' allows for the same abuse.

** The secret level in Commander Keen 5: The Armageddon Machine contains enough [[LawOfOneHundred Vitalin]] to gain two lives at the very start. Die, repeat...

* InvincibleMinorMinion: Every game has at least one type of mook that is immune to Keen's gun, and can thus only be dealt with by avoiding them. And some of them have invincible major minions as well, like ''Keen V'''s Robo Red.

* MooksButNoBosses: Only three levels in the entire series have bosses: The final level in Episode 3 (Mortimer [=McMire=] on his Mangling Machine), Episode 5 (Shikadi Master), and Keen Dreams (Boobus Tuber). And only those in 3 and Dreams are faced in a classic boss battle in which they can (and must, if you wish to win the game) be defeated. the Shikadi Master is an InvincibleVillain that only appears in the medium and hard difficulty settings, and acts as an additional obstacle (the real goal of the game is to destroy the Omegametic). That said, there are various BossInMookClothing enemies in the series, as noted above.

* NotQuiteDead: The Arachnut and Blue Birds from ''Keen IV'' can be temporarily stunned if you shoot them with your ray gun, but never permanently killed. (Or permanently stunned. After all, the way other enemies "die" in the episodes IV - VI leaves them with stars going around their heads.) The first time you see them suddenly spring back to life is disconcerting, to say the least. (Incidentally, the gun you use in IV - VI is officially called a "neural stunner"; the background story to IV has Keen use it on his ''parents'', so it's definitely a StunGun.)
** The same goes for the Volte-face from ''Armageddon Machine''.
** Also, in ''Keen Dreams'', none of the enemies, except for Boobus Tuber, can be permanently killed. Keen can only temporarily turn them into flowers with the help of special bombs. On the other hand, if you flower-ize them when they're right next to a bottomless pit, they may fall off...

* PuzzleBoss: The Vorticon guarding the everclear in 1. As you're told by a Yorpish oracle, "You cannot kill the Vorticon Commander directly." [[spoiler:The solution is to shoot a cable, dropping a giant slab of stone on the Vorticon commander. Ironically it is possible to kill him directly by shooting him over 100 times.]]
** ''Commander Keen 5'' Zigzagged with the little purple robots called Little Ampton; on the platforms, they are harmless and only push Keen away, but when zipping up and down poles they are deadly.

* ShiftingSandLand: ''Secret of the Oracle'': the north-west section of the World Map consists of a desert. It contains 3 levels, 2 of which are mandatory in order to proceed. Surprisingly, although the same game also features 4 pyramids, they are not located in this area of the map but rather in a forest more to the south.

* SpikesOfDoom: Very common in ''Secret of the Oracle'', especially in the mountain and pyramid levels.

* NintendoHard: The military installation levels in episode 3 (Fort Cavort, Fort Vorticon, Fort Vorta Bella, [[FanNickname Fort Vox]] [[invoked]], and Cape Canavorta) are among the most difficult levels in the entire series. They're all optional, however.

* UnreliableNarrator: If you read the story from the help file, you can come to the conclusion that the whole "adventure" is just in Billy's head - he's just playing in the garage and backyard.
** It doesn't explain the reaction of Billy's mother after Marooned on Mars ([[spoiler:"WHAT IS THIS ONE EYED GREEN THING IN YOUR ROOM!?"]])

** Keen 5 can be rendered unwinnable if, in the final level, you cause all the Shikadi Mines to explode before any of them is close enough to the Q.E.D., leaving you with no way to destroy the machine.
** In Keen 6, as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEsUtMqcT8w&feature=relmfu this]] playthrough by Reed Wulf demonstrates, it is possible for a crucial item (blue key) to drop through the killer trap and off the map ''in the last level'', making the game unwinnable. If you have enough lives left (and there are three in a secret area at the top of this room), you can suicide to reset the level, but if you exit the room without getting the blue gem, you're stuck as there's no way back.

* UnwinnableByDesign:
** Subverted in Episode 3: Keen Must Die! The "Impossible Maze of the Caves of Oblivion" before the final level is just that; if you face the challenge head-on and collect all the keycards hidden in the maze cave, you'll find that the level exit is right behind a gate of spikes with no way to get through them. What you're supposed to do instead is pogo up and over the mountain to a ''secret'' exit that's out in the open with no instant-death traps barring your way.
** It's possible to make ''Keen Dreams'' unwinnable if you complete every level in the game but don't collect at least 12 Boobus Bombs (the minimum number required to defeat Boobus Tuber). The game won't even let you enter the final level. Hope you have an earlier save.
** In Episode 4's Pyramid of the Gnosticene Ancients, you have to make sure you reach the key gem needed to exit the level before the item-stealing monster does.[[note]]If you have any lives left, you can suicide and thereby reset the level.[[/note]]

* UnwinnableByMistake: Due to level design goofs or glitches, in some cases it's possible to leave a level without having achieved the objective:
** On Episode 1, it is possible to exit the Vorticon Fortress level without collecting the Everclear (one of the 4 items needed to complete the game) by jumping over the Vorticon to reach the exit.
** One of the city levels in ''Earth Explodes'' have this risk. You're supposed to destroy the Tantalus Ray and then leave through the nearby exit, and in most of these levels that's the only option. In one of them, through ignorance or absent-mindedness, you can exit without destroying the ray; and the level can no longer be completed (there isn't even a warp cheat to get you back in there).
** In the "Cave of the Descendants" in episode 4, there's a door with no floor on the other side, so you fall if you walk through. Due to a glitch, you can, if you're fast enough, go back through the door before you fall, whereupon you instantly win the level. But now you can't rescue the elder from that level.
** Keen 5 can be rendered unwinnable if, in the final level, you cause all the Shikadi Mines to explode before any of them is close enough to the Q.E.D., leaving you with no way to destroy the machine.
** In Keen 6, as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEsUtMqcT8w&feature=relmfu this]] playthrough by Reed Wulf demonstrates, it is possible for a crucial item (blue key) to drop through the killer trap and off the map ''in the last level'', making the game unwinnable. If you have enough lives left (and there are three in a secret area at the top of this room), you can suicide to reset the level, but if you exit the room without getting the blue gem, you're stuck as there's no way back.

* ''Marooned On Mars'' (1990): The first part of the ''Invasion of the Vorticons'' trilogy. While exploring Mars, Keen discovers that the Vorticons have stolen four key components from his ship, and must journey across the landscape to several cities to retrieve his equipment. Featured the first appearance of Keen's signature pogo stick.
* ''The Earth Explodes'' (1990): Keen makes it back to Earth, only to discover that the Vorticon mothership is in orbit, and is planning to fire on eight key cities across the planet. Keen must board the ship to disable each of the eight X-14 Tantalus Ray cannons before they fire. The game featured a DarkerAndEdgier aesthetic; everything attacked Keen immediately, and there were many more pitfalls and dangerous objects to avoid.
* ''Keen Must Die!'' (1990): The final part of the ''Vorticon'' trilogy. After disabling the Vorticon mothership, Keen travels to their home planet in search of the mysterious force that had directed them to Earth. The game featured various Vorticon cities and establishments, and allowed players to learn the Galactic alphabet (a heavily-advertised feature that allowed players to go back to the previous installments and decipher various signs in the levels).

* ''Secret of the Oracle'' (1991): The first part of the ''Goodbye, Galaxy!'' two-parter. After finishing a new sublight radio, Keen discovers a plot by a new alien race, the Shikadi, to take over the galaxy. He travels to the planet Gnosticus IV to consult the Keepers of the Oracle (an ancient alien race), but discovers they have been captured, and sets out to rescue them. The game featured much larger levels and a wide assortment of enemies, as well as new game mechanics and minigames.
* ''The Armageddon Machine'' (1991): The final part of ''Goodbye, Galaxy!'' Keen lands on a massive space station called the Omegamatic, manned by the Shikadi, and sets out to deactivate the machine and save the galaxy.
* ''Aliens Ate My Babysitter!'' (1992): Keen's babysitter Molly is kidnapped by an alien race named the Bloogs, and he must rescue her by fighting his way through the planet Fribbulus Xax. The game was published by [=FormGen=] and resold by Apogee.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar:
** In the Paris Tantalus level in episode 2, there is a section with colored platforms that spell out - in SGA letters - a certain [[PrecisionFStrike expletive]]. However, it's actually misspelled "fucl" (intentionally, as explained by Tom Hall on his [[http://tomtomtom.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/happy-21st-birthday-commander-keen/ blog]] [[invoked]]). This has become something of a MemeticMutation in the Keen community, with "fucl" (rhymes with "buckle") being a popular swear word on the forums.
** There's an island in Keen 3, with one level and two teleporters, and shaped like a man's privates.
** The tiny, purple robots in Keen 5 are named "Little Ampton" which, according to Tom Hall, is derived from "Little Hampton"; a phrase used on some British TV show to refer to a guy with small privates.
** In the fourth game, in the level "Pyramid of the Moons", there is a floor tile with a moon on it. If you stand on that tile and wait for Keen's idle animation, he will instead [[VisualPun moon the player.]]

* WritingAroundTrademarks: The game originally started as a ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros'' clone for [=PCs=]. id tried to get Nintendo to distribute it, but they weren't interested, so they used the engine to create an original game.

** If Keen stands on one of the crescent moon symbols in the Pyramid of the Moons, and left idle, his first IdleAnimation is to {{moon|ing}} the viewer. In episodes 4-6, the doors are opened by using the matching colour gemstone -- key stones.

** Due to a glitch in the 1.4 version of the fifth game, it's possible to skip to the top of the Omegamatic without destroying the four machines first. If Keen enters a certain doorway in one of the machine levels ater pushed off a pole by a Little Ampton, he will exit the level and warp to the Korath base, a [[BonusDungeon Bonus Level]] normally reached from the penultimate level. Completing that level will send Keen "back" to the top floor of the Omegamatic, and the two final levels.

* OrphanedSeries: Although these games are a fairly enjoyable way to spend an afternoon if you're not busy, they were discontinued before a satisfactory conclusion could be reached, and a number of copyright hand-changes have made an official conclusion more or less defunct.

* ObviousBeta: Some of the levels in [=Keen1=] and [=Keen3=] show signs of not being playtested properly. Many levels in ''Keen Must Die'' have entire areas that are completely inaccessible, while the secret level of ''Marooned on Mars'' has items that are inaccessible due to gaps being too small or across a chasm that is impossible to jump. Finally, one of the smaller levels (next to the Vorticon Fortress) has a yellow keycard but no yellow door.

* MeaninglessLives: At least in 4-6, where the game save feature is essentially a built-in save-state system, and death sends you back to the start of the levels - meaning that SaveScumming is a way of life, which makes the lives useless.

* BrotherSisterTeam: Keen's kids Billy and Billie in the mobile game.

* CanonDiscontinuity: Tom Hall's stance on the 2001 Game Boy Color game, and the 2019 mobile game.

* KidHero: Keen is 8, and already saving the Earth first, and then the Galaxy. The mobile game features his son and daugther, whose age is not given but who are obviously still ementary school aged, and as heroic as their father.

* LegacyCharacter: In the mobile game from 2019, Keen has grown up and has two kids of his own, who carry on the mantle of Commander Keen.

* SchmuchBait: The switches on the Tantalus Ray cannons in the second game.