Commander Keen Level Maps

I spent so many hours playing the first game as a kid, decoding the alphabet (which I would later discover it tells you how to read in episode 2 or 3 anyway), trying to get every last item, etc.

My favourite bit was the dark, fiery secret tunnel underneath one of the larger levels (http://www.commander-keen.com/levelmaps/1/013.gif), which teleports you to the city on the right-hand side of the world map at the bottom of the level maps page, not really visible from the map screen when going between the main cities... but I no longer remember which of these maps is that city, alas

(or maybe not alas: I hope I've put some more currently useful information in that part of my brain instead. Thanks for the nostalgia!)

I too had a lot of fun decoding the language in Keen. Keen 5's victory sequence ended with a big message onscreen in keenspeak - I copied that down onto paper and worked out the alphabet from there.

I dunno about for these Keen maps, but I wrote a level dumper for the classic NES game M.C. Kids if you want to see what that looks like:

https://gitlab.com/mcmapper/mcmapper/blob/master/main.c

Output:

https://tcrf.net/Proto:M.C._Kids

I'm contemplating turning it into a full level editor for the ROM hacking community, but I don't know how much use it would actually get.

I very much enjoyed the speedruns of this game done by CapnClever on twitch. He has records on most official games and also has run some of the unofficial games.

It great to see someone running through levels I sweated blood and tears on as a kid.

https://m.twitch.tv/capnclever/profile

The entire top half of Keen 3 map 8 is inaccessible because of incorrectly placed blocks:

http://www.commander-keen.com/levelmaps/3/008.gif

It's not necessary to complete the level, and it's harder to notice when your screen doesn't have the resolution to see the whole thing at once, but it's interesting that it was released like this.