Did you know that in commander keen 1 marooned on mars

[Vortlike]

Did you know that in commander keen 1 marooned on mars

If you open the very first accessible level in keen 1 that is also called level01.ck1 in a level editor such as mindbelt. If you carefully look at the starting location of keen you will see that it is located at coordinate 3,15. or x=3 y=15. That seems to remarkably foreshadow keens final confrontation with his nemesis mortimer mcmire. who has an iq of 315 unlike keens iq of 314. both characters iq seem a reference to pi. 3,1415 ect

Of Course mortimer may have orchestrated everything. the fact that keen got stuck on mars and maybe even how and exactly where somehow.

Of Course you may wonder if the mindbelt logic of counting coordinates is specific to mindbelt only and not the original keen game. Namely counting the 2 tile border and counting the very first tile as 0 rather than one. Still this may in fact be the default keen logic. If not, it's still a remarkable coincidence.
It still makes you wonder if this was an easter egg that was intended to be potentially found at one point. Then maybe they also always intended keen to be customizable at one point. There may be evidence pointing in that direction also.

[SodiumtheGlitcher]

lol

I've looked at that level in Mindbelt, but never bothered to check such things

[Vortlike]

I know right. I only noticed this recently by accident. i tried to take a quick look for other meaningful coordinates in keen 1 but found none.

[Keening_Product]

This is a really fun spot. Well done, and ty for making it better known!

[dark]

That Mortimer... always one step ahead of Keen!

[Vortlike]

I have a bit of a followup on this topic. I spotted another -possibly relevant- occurrence of the number 315.

The tileset (only visible with modding tool or to code divers) has a system to number the tiles. and tile number 315 seems somehow iconically landed on the eye of the yorp statue

This feels somehow more than coincidence to me. We know that mortimer created the plot to steal keens ship parts. Perhaps mortimer has coopted the yorp wisdom somehow too. tile 315 is the tile that appears when the statue is shut down. This symbolizes that the wisdom of the yorp oracle is interupted or limited somehow



Now here is another way that you can find 315 (arguably if you try to)

the vorticon commander takes 105 shots. Now think for a moment 315/3=105

now I know, arbitrarily multiplying by 3 to make your theory work seems forced. But hear me out.

only keen 1 and keen 3 have a final boss. (of the first trilogy atleast)

mortimer is represented by the number 315 (due to his IQ)

When keen confronts the vorticon commander he is at exactly one third of the journey to finally confront mortimer

the 105 shots somehow almost perfectly foreshadow mortimer and his number 315