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Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

> Nintendo declined the partership, and the project was reborn as an original title -- Commander Keen -- which debuted 25 years ago today.

Looked it up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyTDI2ATb6k

is it just me or it seems to be light years behind super mario bros 3? In term of fluidity, fun, graphics, level design... I haven't played it but it looks like it wouldn't stands well nowadays while the former is still playable and enjoyable.

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It's not just you. The Keen games were fun, but I'd always prefer to play Mario as a kid. I wouldn't be all that surprised to learn that part of the reason Nintendo declined the partnership offer was because id's SMB3 engine wasn't actually very faithful to the original game -- for all that its jump timing and ground friction are quirky and occasionally weird, they are also very distinctive, and it's obvious from the video that id either didn't understand that or didn't understand why it was important.

All that could easily be fixed and was mostly a result of the rushed job and them not having access to source material to work with. I think the only reason Nintendo declined is because they didn't want Nintendo games on non-Nintendo systems.

It was a good game but hasn't aged that well. However Commander Keen 4 and on have aged much better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MYPCJ55JME

This game was a lot of fun back in the early 90s. I'm probably looking at it through rose colored glasses, but I was still able to play it to completion a few years ago when I decided to revisit it. However, I would agree that Mario 3 is the superior game.

Nintendo has a lot of clever hacks that Keen doesn't use: e.g., the 'trees' are also the 'clouds'. The 'victory' music is the Mario theme backwards. I suspect (Carmack and Romero are on here, and can totally correct me) that Keen has little music and plain grey backgrounds to fit into memory without resorting to those kinds of hacks.

What? The cloud tile re-use is from the first game, and no part of any Mario game plays back the melody backwards to generate the victory music. The victory music is a distinct musical track.

> What?

Just ask for a citation or state a correction. No need to be rude.

> The cloud tile re-use is from the first game

That's correct, it's used in earlier games, it's not from SMB 3. The point about Nintendo doing hacks for efficiency purposes still stands.

> no part of any Mario game plays back the melody backwards to generate the victory music.

I've seen a video somewhere recently that showed how sound affects were re-used - some of the re-use went unnoticed for over 20 years. Trying to find it now.

Are you suggesting that Id is much better at creating engines than at creating fully-rounded, fun games?

Perish the thought!

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