Keen's Mod Madness #1: Mink's Puzzle Pack
5If you talk to anybody that know me at all, they'll tell you that I couldn't possibly care less about sports than I already do. Specially when it comes to football. American or European. I find both boring and pointless. But, I am a fan of That 70's Show, MST3K(Specially after Mike comes on the show. Joel's still cool though.), and Commander Keen. So, the only football team that I know about aside from the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Penn State Nittanny Lions(having been born and raised in central PA) is the Greenbay Packers.
The only reason that I know the Packers won is because I happened to go out for dinner with my sister and her girlfriends to this really awesome Indian restaurant that had a few big screen TVs. We were wondering why the place was pretty much empty, then somebody(not me, I know that much) asked, "Hey, isn't the Superbowl tonight?" Me:"Wow? Really? It doesn't feel like I've been avoiding FaceBook that long." "Who's playing." Me: "Wait... I'd recognize that green and yellow helmet anywhere. It's the Packers and somebody else. Don't care who the other team is. I'm gonna be a total nerd and support the Packers just because of Commander Keen." My sister just laughed. We grew up playing Keen 1 and 4. We're waiting for our food about fifteen minutes later when somebody happens to look at the screen. "Hey. I think somebody won." "Really?" "I think so, yeah. There's people running across the field." "Maybe somebody broke a leg?" "Nah. Doesn't look like anybody's concerned. Looks more celebratory. ... I think it's the Packers!" Me: "Hah. Awesome. Who was the other team anyway?" "The Steelers." Me: "Well, not like Pittsburgh has much going for it from what I've seen aside from Tekkoshocon and Pizza Parma."
Now, you're probably wondering why the hell you really need to know all that. Well, you don't really, but I decided to(finally) put up a bunch of Commander Keen videos and decided to use the Packers apparent victory as an excuse.
So, let's start this off with an awesome Keen 5 mod: Mink's Puzzle Pack. While it's not the hands down best Keen mod ever(that's reserved for the unofficial The Universe is Toast trilogy), it certainly wins my vote for the most original. If I had to compare it to anything, I'd compare it to Portal. The gameplay of the mod revolves around firing Keen clones which move like Keen does(although getting them to jump and pogo takes some doing), but cannot be killed by various stage obstacles, while still stunning enemies like shots do in the original game. As you can tell, I'm kinda bad at it, but that doesn't make it any less awesome or fun.
While you'll have to find your own copy of Keen 5, the mod can be found on the Keen Wiki here:http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/Mink%27s_Puzzle_Pack