PC Games: Commander Keen 4: Secret of the Oracle
0The step up in quality and presentation between the original Commander Keen trilogy and Goodbye Galaxy is nothing short of amazing. Improved controls. Better variety. Detailed backgrounds. More interesting enemies. Smoother animation. Digitized sound effects and background music. And even though they both use 16-color EGA graphics, with the same standard palette, the second trilogy uses it so much more effectively that it looks far more lively and colorful. And it even has a built-in minigame, if you feel like a bit of Pong.
Oddly enough, though, the Goodbye Galaxy "trilogy" only has two games, this and The Armageddon Machine. Keen 6, Aliens Ate My Babysitter, ended up being split off as a standalone story. All three use the same engine and have a very similar feel, though I recall Keen 6 experimenting with a few new ideas. It's not clear where it fits into the series chronologically, either.
There was also another Keen game, Keen Dreams, between Keen 3 and Keen 4, that was in many respects a prototype for the Goodbye Galaxy engine. It's more obscure and perhaps best described as "weird", with Keen fighting giant sentient vegetables for reasons I don't really remember, but plays very similarly to Keen 4.
In any case, The Armageddon Machine and Aliens Ate My Babysitter both end with related sequel hooks, as a third trilogy, The Universe Is Toast, in which Keen's nemesis tries to destroy not just Earth or the galaxy but the entire universe, was planned to follow. Unfortunately, with id Software busy shifting its focus to first-person shooters, the sequel never came. The use of a two-game series and a separate standalone game instead of the typical trilogy in a market dominated by three-game series, as well as poor marketing in general, are believed to have hurt sales for these games, which likely helped prompt that decision. And although Activision eventually published a follow-up game for the Game Boy Color, it was more of a "based on" than a "sequel to", and something about it just felt lacking.
Commander Keen himself, the Dopefish featured in one level of Secret of the Oracle, and a few other game elements have made cameos in other games since, but the dangling plotline has never been resolved.
Other Videos By Erifellen
| 2021-12-01 | PC Games: The Adventures of Captain Comic |
| 2021-11-25 | Atari 8-bit: Adventure Creator (quest editor) |
| 2021-11-23 | PC Games: Duke Nukem 3D |
| 2021-11-19 | Atari 8-bit: Adventure Creator (random Advanced quest) |
| 2021-11-16 | PC Games: Duke Nukem 2 |
| 2021-11-14 | Atari 8-bit: Adventure Creator (random Beginner quest) |
| 2021-11-11 | PC Games: Duke Nukem |
| 2021-11-05 | Atari 8-bit: Creepy Caverns |
| 2021-11-02 | PC Games: Chex Quest (DOOM engine) |
| 2021-10-27 | Atari 8-bit: Alien Garden |
| 2021-10-26 | PC Games: Commander Keen 4: Secret of the Oracle |
| 2021-10-24 | Atari 8-bit: E.T. Phone Home! |
| 2021-10-22 | PC Games: Commander Keen 1: Marooned on Mars |
| 2021-10-20 | Atari 8-bit: Castle Hassle |
| 2021-10-18 | PC Games: Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure |
| 2021-10-14 | Atari 8-bit: Linking Logic |
| 2021-10-12 | PC Games: The Faery Tale Adventure |
| 2021-10-10 | Atari 8 bit: Peanut Butter Panic |
| 2021-10-08 | PC Games: F. Godmom |
| 2021-10-01 | PC Games: Paganitzu |
| 2021-09-30 | Atari 8-bit: Dragonriders of Pern |
Other Statistics
Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy Statistics For Erifellen
Erifellen currently has 27 views spread across 1 video for Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy. His channel published less than an hour of Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy content, less than 0.07% of the total video content that Erifellen has uploaded to YouTube.