Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Commander Keen Episode 1: Marooned on Mars.

To do: Plenty more can be added here, see https://keenwiki.shikadi.net/wiki/Keen:_Vorticons_Development

Development Timeline#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: If John Romero and Scott Miller apparently didn't get in "proper contact" until after the "fan letters" incident, then why does Miller's non-anonymous proposal predate Romero's angry response to the "fan letters"?

1990

• August 23 - Date of Scott Miller's letter to John Romero, proposing Romero write a shareware game akin to Pyramids of Egypt for Apogee.
• September 6 - Date of John Romero's angry response to Scott Miller's "fan letters".
• September - John Carmack, then at Softdisk, experiments with smooth horizontal scrolling on the Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) for PCs.¹
• September 20 - Build date of Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement, a demo of said scrolling with the titular character in the first level of Super Mario Bros. 3. This leads to the birth of what would become id Software, a development group independent of Softdisk.
• Between September 20-28 - Ideas From the Deep (IFD), as they were so called at the time, spend their free time working on a short PC demo of Super Mario Bros. 3, using the Dave scrolling code. They send the completed demo to Nintendo. Despite the executives being impressed by the project, they don't allow it to become a full port due to their stance on what platforms their IP goes on.²
• September 28 - IFD sends Scott Miller the Mario demo, along with a proposal for an original IP using its engine, Commander Keen.
• October 9/10 - Scott Miller writes two letters giving suggestions for the game.
• November 20 - Build date of the November beta.³
• December 3 - Build date of the December beta.
• December 14 - Marooned on Mars is released for DOS.⁴ The other two episodes are listed for order in-game.
• December 18 - The date on the files in the initial versions of The Earth Explodes and Keen Must Die!

1991

• January - The game is updated to Version 1.3.
• January 23 - The game is updated to Version 1.31.
• February 1 - With the team having resigned from Softdisk, id Software is officially formed.
• May 21 - The game is updated to Version 1.32.
• August 25 - The game is updated to Version 1.34.

Early Episode Titles#

The latter two episodes of the trilogy once had different titles.

November 1990 Teaser#

At least one shareware distribution of The Monuments of Mars contains files called READALL.TXT and DOC.DOC, dated 1990-11-10, cataloging released and upcoming games from Apogee. One such game happens to be Commander Keen.

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: What did they mean by Keen already having been "sold commerically" by November 1990? If anything, even.

   Ûßßß ÛßßÛ ÛßÛßÛ ÛßÛßÛ ÛßßÛ ÛßÛ Û ßÛßßÛ Ûßßß ÛßßÛ    Û Ûß Ûßßß Ûßßß ÛßÛ Û
   Û    Û  Û Û Û Û Û Û Û ÛßßÛ Û Û Û  Û  Û Ûß   ÛßÛß    ÛßßÛ Ûß   Ûß   Û Û Û
   ßßßß ßßßß ß ß ß ß ß ß ß  ß ß ßßß ßßßßß ßßßß ß ßß    ß  ß ßßßß ßßßß ß ßßß
 
                            COMING DECEMBER 1990 

  AN ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT EGA GRAPHICS GAME THAT PLAYS LIKE A NINTENDO GAME.
   SO GOOD IS THIS GAME THAT IT HAS ALREADY BEEN SOLD COMMERCIALLY AND WILL
                   BE RELEASED AS A NINTENDO CARTRIDGE!
    COMMANDER KEEN WILL BREAK NEW GROUND IN THE QUALITY OF SHAREWARE GAMES.

Despite what it says, the game was not, in fact, "released as a Nintendo cartridge".*

*Unless you count the Game Boy Color game from over a decade later.

References#