When a shareware platformer makes it!
Commander Keen could have easily lost its way as so many other of its peers back in the day; The first one in the series didn't really manage to create such an original or such a over the top experience that it couldn't have managed to be overlooked. But it did one little thing differently than most other titles: it offered a longer chunk of free gameplay than most others; that meant that the people that loved it, really were enticed to buy it, and, thus, with a little word to mouth help, the game managed to garner a really big and enduring audience. Thus, the later titles had the space to develop, and, while still keeping the formula that made the original stand out, they did manage a more polished experience than most of the other games around. As such, Commander Keen 3 was as entertaining and as well polished as you'd expect, without making the artistic or gameplay style jump to the, well, mainstream, as much as that was a thing back in 1990. So, at any rate, Commander Keen 3 is a great platformer, a son of the BBS age and an adventure worth sinking into, with loads of environments, lots of ambient puzzles and that great DOS shareware attitude intact!
