One of the best shareware era platformers
Commander Keen is the first in its series, a side scroller, adventure, platformer, action game, with a very sweet and familiar character, Keen, the space explorer, and all the staples that made the Shareware era of DOS gaming so interesting. One of those aspects, as I just mentioned is overall likeability; but that was not because these games were exceptional, or gimmicky or flashy, or had anything that made them stand out; nope, they impressed with being sufficiently polished, sufficiently diverse, but always confident enough never to go out of their way and be the best! Yeah, it sounds like a lot of mumbo jumbo, I know, but it's true. Take the animations of the baddies or of the player character in the game: they don't have a lot of frames, but they do the job great. The backgrounds too, are never too exquisite, but they look good enough to offer you information about where you are and to make the foreground pop out, stand out, and that is certainly what they need to accomplish. So, with that said, you pretty much can't say that you aren't having fun. Download Xargon too, for yet another great example of the shareware era platformers, probably the best section, as well as the most player friendly of the entire DOS catalogue.
