Commander Keen/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Fan Nickname: Billy's pet Yorp is usually called Mort among the fans, even though it is never called this in the game, its food bowl says "Spot" on it, and Tom Hall in the Keen FAQ, confirms that its name is indeed Spot.
  • Franchise Killer: While id Software was already becoming less and less interested in making Commander Keen games, especially after Tom Hall left the company, many believe that the 2001 GBC game (with its poor sales and mixed reception) was the final nail in the coffin for the series. Nearly twenty years have passed since the last Commander Keen game was released (not counting the occasional re-release), and there has still been no news of another installment being made.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: The full version of Aliens Ate My Babysitter. Apogee needed FormGen's help to get the game out, and thus they could only act as a middleman in selling the game. Once FormGen went under and Apogee ran out of their stock, that was, as they say, that. Somehow id Software (a longtime collaborator with Apogee) got the rights to include it in the incredibly rare Id Anthology CD set. It's a little easier to find copies of that in order to buy Aliens Ate My Babysitter (although it's still a hundred bucks).
  • What Could Have Been: id tried to publish the first game through Softdisk, as they already had a contract with them. Softdisk rejected it because the game didn't work with CGA.