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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3971 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 21, 2023

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My wife and I both remember playing a PC game in the mid to late 90s that neither of us have been able to remember the name of or track down. It was a 2d platformer with pixel graphics. The setting was some kind of factory or laboratory, and the enemies were monsters or aliens. I remember one type of enemy being like a floating ball with eye stalks. The player character was a human, and I believe you could collect various weapons and items as you progressed through the game. I'm pretty sure it wasn't part of any well-known game series, such as Metroid or Lode Runner. Anyone have any guesses what this could be?

Edit: It's Commander Keen, thanks for the help everyone.

Oh man, Commander Keen. Played tons of that around the year 2000 because they were free downloads on dosgames.com(?). I remember trying to learn the standard galactic alphabet in the game and getting wrecked by the dopefish. I still remember all the in game music... I might have to go back and play them now!

There’s also the original Duke Nukem 1 and 2 platformers.

I was going to guess Duke Nukem as well, before I read that it was Commander Keen. Funny to think, both of those 2D platformers were the predecessors to revolutionary genre-defining first person shooters in the 90s, Duke Nukem 3D for the former, obviously, and Doom for the latter. Duke Nukem 1 was the first game I ever beat all the way through, thanks to it both having a save system and being easy enough for a fairly uncoordinated kid like me to beat. I played it using a joystick, one of those flight joysticks that you grip with one hand with thumb buttons at the top, just because I thought that's how I was supposed to play it; in retrospect, simple keyboard controls would've made the game much easier.

Oh man, I played a ton of Duke Nukem 1 back in the day. Those jumping bipedal robots terrified me when I was a kid.

There were a bunch of Apogee platformers of various themes. Commander Keen was the most well-known, but Bio Menace (gameplay video) and maybe Crystal Caves (gameplay video) fit the setting of "factory or laboratory" best, I think. (Also, even if they're not the games you're looking for, they're both good games; there were three in both series, I believe.)

It was Commander Keen, but I'll have to give the others a shot.

Commander Keen, maybe? It checks all the boxes except collecting various weapons.

It's Commander Keen, nicely done.

eyyyyy. Glad to have helped!

Could be Microman: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gxUFLqFSOFU

Completely forgot this game existed and now I'm remembering losing my mind trying to beat this as a kid, I had an identical reaction to my rediscovery of Speedy Eggbert just a couple of weeks ago. Serendipity might be one of my favorite human experiences, thanks for posting this.

This is pretty close. The graphics were better than this, and the maps were larger than a single screen and would scroll with the character as you moved. Maybe it could be a sequel to this?

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