Commander Keen

by SPIG

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005JY65
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.7 x 2.3 inches ; 2.4 pounds
• Media: Game Cartridge
• Release Date: May 29, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,123 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Commander Keen finds precocious 8-year-old superhero Billy Blaze on an all-new quest to save the world from treacherous alien adversaries. A side-scrolling platform action-adventure game, Commander Keen challenges players to save the world by recovering the super-powerful plasma crystals hidden on three alien worlds. Each world contains several multilevel maps rife with progressively more precarious puzzles, toxic slime pits, and secret areas. You will face off against more than 35 different aliens and megabosses with your trusty neural ray gun as you collect secret keys, uncover clues, and ride magical platforms and special teleporters.

Product Description

This is the game Commander Keen for the Original Game Boy Color. This game is used and comes as the cartridge only. All of our Game Boy Color games are cleaned tested and guaranteed to work. Here at NintendosForSale.com we stand by our products and offer a 60 days guarantee. If a game does not work within 60 days from the time you receive it we will gladly exchange it for you.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars NOT the good old Commander Keen, February 20, 2011

By 

M. Anderson "just some guy" (Milwaukee, WI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Commander Keen (Game Cartridge)

If you're just looking for a simple, amusing platformer, then you'll probably enjoy this. However, if you're looking for a true Commander Keen game to continue the classic computer series you loved so much in your youth... well, this is not it. And it's from that standpoint that I'm basing this review.


BORING ENEMIES. In the original Keen series, every enemy felt unique... whether in the number of shots it took to defeat, the way it reacted to Keen, its speed or pattern of movement, etc. In this game, however, the majority of the enemies are identical: they just walk back and forth at the same speed, and (with a few exceptions) Keen can easily defeat each one by shooting it once and then pogo jumping on it. Perhaps this wouldn't be so bad if the enemies were at least NEW for this game, but most of the character designs are taken directly from previous Keen games... and yet they don't act in the same ways. (Blooguards are here, but they never smash their clubs and they can be killed with one shot and one pogo; Robo Red is here, but his machine gun action is gone and he can be killed with one shot and one pogo; etc.)

LEVELS ALL FEEL THE SAME. Like the enemies, each level in the original Keen games had its own personality: there were maze levels, mountain levels, simple left-to-right levels, narrow up-and-down levels... even an underwater level. But the Gameboy Keen levels have no variety; you just kind of go back and forth until you get to the end.

BOTTOMLESS PITS EVERYWHERE. The levels have no walls or lower floors, just platforms of various sizes and heights that you jump around... which means that underneath, there's always a bottomless pit. That's right: you can ALWAYS fall to your death, regardless of the level (except for the boss rooms). This is completely uncharacteristic of Keen games, and it gets obnoxious very quickly.

MINIMAL SECRETS. The old Keen games were chock full of secrets: unseen openings in walls, hidden points and lives, secret levels, etc. This game has some "hard-to-get-to" extra lives here and there, but none of them are really that challenging to figure out. This greatly diminishes the game's replay value, whereas I played the old games over and over because I was always finding new things.

BACKGROUNDS AND FOREGROUNDS LOOK THE SAME. That is to say, the artwork of the background pictures is just as bold in style and outline as the artwork of the items with which Keen interacts... which makes it impossible to know which items you can jump on and which ones will kill you, as opposed to which ones you can simply walk right past.

GAME SAVE IS FRUSTRATING. After completing each level, you are given a twelve-digit code that you can write down and input later in order to start where you left off... but the tedium of having to do this is almost not worth it.

LACK OF HUMOR/STORY. Not that the original games were hilarious or anything, but the amusing and somewhat tongue-in-cheek nature of the series was a huge part of what made it so entertaining to me (giant sandwiches, secret level enemies wearing kilts, an episode entitled "Aliens Ate My Babysitter", etc.). There's nothing amusing or clever here.


So yeah: vaguely entertaining -- enough for me to give it 2 stars instead of 1, anyway -- but simply not the Commander Keen I grew up with and was hoping to find again.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars They don't make them like they used to..., May 14, 2008

By 

Cornelius Talmadge - See all my reviews

= Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Commander Keen (Game Cartridge)

As an avid fan of the older PC games like the original 2D Duke Nukem, Crystal Caves, Secret Agent, and others, I was very much into the Commander Keen series. Apogee and ID made 6 titles under the Commander Keen name, and Softdisk made Keen Dreams, a strange offshoot of the series.

So, several years later when they released this for the Game Boy Color, I decided to pick it up. It was cheap, and how bad could it be?

Well, bad is an understatement. Although the game features enemies and locations reminiscent of Keen 4-6, the game plays completely different. The pogo stick jumps different, the ray gun shoots different, and the lackluster stages and frustrating platforming will have you losing most of your lives in just a few short minutes.

To me, this isn't Keen, and this isn't worth the money.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Game, December 27, 2002

By 

Jared (Ogden, UT USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Commander Keen (Game Cartridge)

I have played all the commander keen games, and I'm glad they made a new one. This was a very fun game, and commander keen fan's should try out this game.