When I was a kid, I would frequently go over to my friend's house to play on his computer. While I had an NES (and later an SNES and Sega Genesis), there was something very original about playing games on a PC, and we really enjoyed a wide variety of games on his PC, none more than a few Apogee/id Software releases in the Commander Keen series and Wolfenstein 3D. We were cheap little children, however, so we only had the free portions of these shareware titles, rather than ponying up the dough for the later releases.
For those of you not blessed enough to experience the shareware era, the basic idea was that you could get the first part of a series of games for free via download from the early internet (or far more frequently, from a friend who copied the game onto a floppy disc) and then you could mail in to the company who developed the game with a check for the remaining parts of the series. This had a few advantages, including the fact that companies could cut out the middlemen in Babbage's and other assorted retailers for PC games and handle distribution themselves. They didn't have to worry as much about backstock either, only making as many copies as people wanted. But by far the biggest advantage was in marketing. Giving away copies of a fairly fleshed out game gave people a nice taste for the game, and encouraged them to go and buy more if they liked it.
For those unfamiliar with the story of Commander Keen, I'd highly recommend that you go check out some resources! It's a really fascinating story that launched the genesis of some of PC gaming's most beloved titles and franchises, including Wolfenstein (not quite the genesis, but certainly the start of the series' most popular era), Doom, and Quake. Basically, Commander Keen began as an attempt to replicate the scrolling of Super Mario Bros. on a PC. Prior to this time (late 80s), PC gaming generally featured very different kinds of games from consoles. Games like point and click adventures, text adventures, and single screen games were far more easily accomplished on PC, while side scrolling platformers were the bread and butter for console games. The technical details evade me, but the reality is that while side scrollers had been around for nearly 5 years at this point on consoles, the genre hadn't been capable of existing on PC, at least not with the ability to scroll in more than one direction. Enter genius John Carmack, who figured it out in short order with the idea of pitching Nintendo on making a PC version of Super Mario Bros. 3. Nintendo declined, leaving Carmack with really cool tech, and a team of developers worked together with him to make Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons as a shareware title, offering the first episode, Marooned on Mars, as the entry level free drug to hook the unsuspecting populace. Episodes two and three were then available for purchase for the reasonable price of $30.
Marooned on Mars tells the story of Billy Blaze, boy genius, who builds a rocket ship and becomes trapped on Mars without critical parts to his spaceship. Armed with only his brother's football helmet (upon donning this, he refers to himself as Commander Keen), he must set off around Mars to combat the vicious Vorticons who live there, find the missing parts to his spaceship, and set back for home before his parents find out that he's missing.
If this sounds a bit like a hokey kids' comic book or choose your own adventure story, you're right! If it sounds somewhat out of character for the team behind the savagely gory and adult Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, you're also right! But as hokey kids, we loved it!
The game play is fairly derivative of Super Mario Bros., although it's admittedly far more rudimentary than even the first title in that series, while being positively laughed out of the building by Super Mario Bros. 3. When contrasting the visuals of the two, Super Mario Bros. has the edge in essentially every area, with more detailed sprites and backgrounds, smoother animations, and a wider range of highly differentiated areas than its PC copycat. I can't think of a single thing that Marooned on Mars does better than Super Mario Bros., as it completely lacks music, has typically bleepy (?) 80's PC sound effects, the controls are far clunkier (in order to shoot your gun, you need to simultaneously press the jump and pogo stick buttons, which results in wasted ammo all the time), is way shorter and has fewer levels, fewer and less impactful secrets, and less effective story conveyance than its NES brothers.
There are plenty of little quirks to the game that really keep it from being excellent, but none stands out more than the failure to use the fun mechanic of the pogo stick. While bouncing mechanics were not new to the platforming genre (having been featured extensively in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and DuckTales), the addition of the pogo stick felt like a late addition to the game that was only useful a handful of times. There was only one instance in the entire game in which you had to use the pogo stick to advance through a level, making the item a very unexplored mechanic.
Ultimately, this game feels like what it was-a tech demo intended to show off cool new advancements in PC gaming and to get you to try its later and far more refined sequels. It has a good sense of humor and nails a lot of things. Elements like the galactic alphabet, a coded language used by the Vorticons, and the cutesy characterizations and juvenile humor really help this stand out for kids, even in an era in which Super Mario Bros. 3 exists. If you had only a PC in 1990, this was really your only option for a Super Mario-lite experience, and on that count it delivers. There are plenty of problems with this game, but it's innovative, lovable, and is a landmark in PC gaming history that you should probably enjoy. It's also the first PC game I've reviewed as part of my What I'm Playing series, which definitely underestimates the length of time I've spent PC gaming in my life. I'll give it an 8.5/10.
Up next is my review of episode two of Commander Keen's Adventures-The Earth Explodes. Should be fun!
TRO
No comments:
Post a Comment