id Software released its first game 35 years ago today, John Carmack’s breakthrough side-scroller engine — Commander Keen title brought smooth scrolling to PCs

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Checks watch - Fuck I’m old.

Eh, at least you lived interesting times. I’m a bit jealous of those who saw the first digital systems take off

Well, at least usenet stood the test of time haha - bring back ICQ dammit!

do you still remember your ICQ number? I do

You remember my ICQ number?! 😱

i just want to know why you never accepted my friend request…27 years ago

Interesting times (positive) vs interesting times (nightmare)

Remembering this on our old CGA PC… I’d have to sneak out into the garage to steal time when my dad wasn’t using it.

I never realized this is where I got my thing for bright pink, cyan, and white… Even playing through Starfield, my ship was those colors. Next time I play it I’m gonna have to make a Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket.

Quick, someone link a compilation of Civvie 11 giving increasingly absurd titles when talking about Carmack!

You mean perfected human analogue and Jace Hall asphyxiator, death-frightening scion capable of seeing beyond the illusionary world before our eyes, engineering elemental and Luddite nemesis John Carmack?

Still one of my favorite games and it’s hard too in certain areas.

And John Carmack today is deadnaming and misgendering trans people upon their death…

I have to assume as a close friend of becky, that still hung out with her post-transition, that must have been something becky was ok with. Alot of older trans are not very sensitive about getting it all absolutely correct. And especially when their old name is the one they are famous/well-known by.

Plus it was written in a timeline of their life and post-transition switches to they. It may not be how younger trans have setup the rules to work, but it doesn’t strike me as something that becky would have had a problem with.

What?

I do know that he provides PR cover for oligarch interests, perhaps in a genuine manner, but the fact remains.

What? Do you have a link? That’s a gut punch if so…

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Oh, the memories. What impressed me most back then was that this was the first time I ever saw an idle animation. If you didn’t move for a while Commander Keen would sit down and read a book 🤯

What, read a book? Don’t they, like, have a smartphone? Commander Been they are.

There was something so magical about the shareware version of this. I remember spending a bunch of time just on the little brick breaker mini game.

My grandmother actually introduced my brother and I to Commander Keen! She was a teacher at the time and had a pretty good grasp on computers when many had never even interacted with one in person. Whenever we went to their house, we always wanted to play on her computer. It made our Nintendo seem like a toy in comparison. She even had some other games too including Quasimodo and another one i could swear was called Arabian or Arabian Nights…

Shareware really was so cool back then 😎 happy memories!

The platforming mechanics aged like milk btw.

The pogo stick was… interesting

Those games made me want to get a real pogo stick. I still have it lying around somewhere.

Please, think of your knees before you find it

I think we only had the shareware version, not the full one. I remember the screenshots from the full version when you completed it, and really wanted to play the rest!

I honestly didn’t play any non-RPGs on the PC until a couple of years ago.

I finally tried Commander Keen after it was compared to Nintendo Super Mario Bros 3.

It did not age like Super Mario Bros 3. At all.

I’ve lived my entire life reading about this in Masters of Doom but never seeming a single screenshot.

The second screenshot in the article is not from keen 1, it’d be 4,5, or 6. There was an engine revamp.

I played it, wasn’t very good really somewhat repetitive and lacked a hook.

There is a whole fictional language in the game.

I remember playing this in the early 90s from a shareware cd, but even then I didn’t really think much of it. Compared to platformers on consoles, even older ones from the NES, it just seemed like it wasn’t on the same level somehow. A lot of that might have to do with the horrible experience of trying to play it on a keyboard, though.

My friends and I played this a lot when I was little. Spent hours on it. The extremely extremely limited ammo system hasn’t been used much since— probably for good reason. The controls weren’t the greatest either, iirc.