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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3365 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 21, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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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.

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.

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