What Happened to the Official "Universe is Toast"?

[lestagio]

First of all, I'm not sure if this topic should be in Official Keen Games, or somewhere else, so sorry about that.

At the end of Keen 5, the text reads: "See you Christmas '92 when Commander Keen returns to battle for the universe! It'll be the biggest Keen ever! You won't believe your eyes!" This was supposed to be "The Universe is Toast!" from what I've gathered. However, this never officially released, except as an unofficial mod.

So I ask, was "Universe is Toast" ever in development? What happened to it? If it was even in development, then why was it scrapped? I know that "Aliens Ate my Babysitter!" released as Keen 6, but its not the same as Universe is Toast. Were there ever any level or enemy concepts for The Universe is Toast? Has it ever been mentioned in interviews? Advertised in magazines? I am curious, and would just like any information on this game that there is, if any!

[szemi]

Tom Hall promised the revealing of his story, but hasn't happened yet... So yeah, we're in the same shoes in this case.

As for the development, John Romero posted a video of Keen 7's tech demo on vimeo.com: https://vimeo.com/148926335


They iced the series because of Wolfenstein 3D (that was released after Keen 5).

[lestagio]

Makes me feel a little sad that we will probably never see another ID produced Keen game... Not saying that it can't happen, and hey, there's a pretty big community around these games still! But, seems a bit odd that the last thing we saw of a new official Keen game (afaik) was a few years ago, through an awful looking mobile port which was scrapped in the end.

Cool looking tech-demo! Posted 8 years ago! Surprised I haven't seen it before.

Hey, there's a good modding community around still, and they churn out all kinds of great mods from what I've seen (I am pretty new to the modding community still). As much as I love Wolfenstein, I am now slightly annoyed that it may have stopped us from getting another Keen game!!

[c64cosmin]

Actually ID going full 3D was the reason we didn't get another Commander Keen, if I remember correctly, I think I've heard either Tom Hall or John Romero (or it could have been John Carmack in a podcast, can't remember) that Marooned on Mars trilogy did better financially for the studio than Goodbye Galaxy. And because they went for 3D they really did open a new door for the company. I mean they very quickly scored millions with Doom, that is life changing money and unfortunately the whole gaming industry shifted back then to games like Quake, Unreal Tournament, Half Life leading to the modern landscape of todays gaming, Wolfenstein 3D's impact is not limited to only ID as a company, but the whole gaming world as a whole. We have Steam, we have Unreal Engine (due to Epic Mega Games entering the 3D area too) we have very powerful GPUs (because games had to have some form of hardware acceleration) we have AI (kinda sucky for humans but still makes funny stuff).
So maybe, if AI enslaves humanity it will reach the whole Universe and Toast it, making The Universe is Toast not only canon, but also making us live in IT. So I guess Doom is the sequel, after all Billy Blaze is Doom Guy's grandfather