Commander Keen is a 2001 video game published by Activision

Activision

Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...

. It is part of the Commander Keen

Commander Keen

Commander Keen is a series of video games developed by id Software in the early 1990s. The series focuses on the adventures of Billy Blaze, an 8-year old boy who travels through space and assumes the identity "Commander Keen". The series was successful at replicating the side-scrolling action of...

 series, which was originally developed by id Software

Id Software

Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...

. Released for the Game Boy Color

Game Boy Color

The is Nintendo's successor to the 8-bit Game Boy handheld game console, and was released on October 21, 1998 in Japan, November 19, 1998 in North America, November 23, 1998 in Europe and November 27, 1998 in the United Kingdom. It features a color screen and is slightly thicker and taller than...

, it was developed with id Softwares permission; however it did not involve any of the original Commander Keen developers. It was developed instead by David A. Palmer Productions. Tom Hall

Tom Hall

Tom A. Hall is a game designer born in Wisconsin. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he received a B.S. in Computer Science. In 1987, he worked at Softdisk Inc., where he was both a programmer and the editor of Softdisk, a software bundle delivered monthly...

, creative director and designer of the original Commander Keen series, has stated that he does not consider the GBC game "canon by any means".

Gameplay

In Commander Keen on the Game Boy Color, gameplay is somewhat different from the rest of the series. The levels are built in a more linear fashion than earlier games. All enemies need to be both shot and jumped on with a pogo stick on to be killed. The familiar enemies' behaviour does not correspond with the earlier games, and perhaps partly due to the platform's limitation, some enemies do not resemble their original versions much. Keen uses a Neural Ray Blaster with unlimited ammo, although the game only allows for one bullet on the screen. To achieve points, Keen collects candy as well as other items somewhat related to the level they are in.