Public Commander Keen Forum

Does snow make people think of Commander Keen? Or is it just me?

Not sure why it makes me think of Keen. It doesn't snow much in Ireland and I don't think there was any snow at all in the years when I was getting into Keen.

I was always in particular fond of the ice levels in Keen1, probably more than any other Keen scenery... such a sense of mystery about it, you really felt like anything could happen to you in those levels.

I think seeing all that snowy stuff in Keen reminded me of playing in the snow earlier in childhood. We had some good snow years. In fact for years I think my dad had a webpage with an animated gif of a snow bear me/him/my sister made in about 1996... can't find it now on his site. I find snow evokes a sense of how things used to be... in particular I imaging it snowed all the time in the 1980s, a decade with which I can be quite obsessed. See videos of "Pictures of You", "Always" etc... and we all know that everything in the 1980s was building up to Commander Keen!

Anyway we've been having a lot of unseasonable snow here this year for some reason. It's just started up again today.

We're not like the North Americans etc... when a foot of snow falls here the country shuts down for a week and calls it "The Beast From The East". And nobody shovels the snow outside their premises... very dangerous, we could do with borrowing some american state laws on this issue!

Anyway snow has fallen and here I am on the PCKF. Have a hankering to play some ice levels... or make some?

Snow is pretty common where I live and I associate it with Christmas. And if I have to associate it with Keenmas, it will be that:



But if I have to associate it with a game, it would be Jazz Jackrabbit 2.

Easter I associate with Hocus Pocus. Each year, when the Easter holidays are coming, I play some Hocus Pocus... It's like a tradition of mine. Now I have the Doom Hocus Pocus mod.

Snow + Keen... pure nostalgia!


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There's a certain connection, yes. When I was a kid it seems it was more often winter than it was summer. About all my memories of playing Keen happen in winter. I felt the same about those snow levels, Benvolio. Not sure if you've played IceKeen, but it's a snow themed level pack for Keen 1 I made in 2013 when I was programming akeen. The levels can be quite challenging: http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/IceKeen

I have played Ice-Keen and in fact it was one of the main inspirations for my most recent mod which I released later that same year (hoh garg that's five years ago almost)

Come to think of it, something about snow is rather Keenish. Not that I've any idea what!

You people are weird.

Yeah, I get a feeling like that when riding a cranky old chair-lift. The forest of snow-laden trees that divide one slope from another is dead silent. The whole earth is still, except for the buzz-buzz coursing through the pipes and cables moving the hundreds of chairs along at a sleepy pace -- and a few squeaky wheels on every support tower. Used to ski/snowboard a lot when I was younger. Now if only it wasn't so garg expensive...