Commander Keen - Episode Two: The Earth Explodes

Having recovered the stolen parts for his spaceship, the eight-year-old Billy Blaze finally returned home. Unfortunately, during the boy's forced stay on Mars, strangers made great progress in invading Earth. The Mother Ship of the Vorticons hung in the sky and then targeted its huge cannon in eight characteristic buildings located all over the planet: the Colosseum in Rome, the White House in Washington, the Blessed Vasil Blessed Church in Moscow, Big Ben in London, the Statue of Liberty in New York, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Sphinx in Cairo and the opera house in Sydney. Keen decides to prevent the attack and starts action to save the famous buildings. As you can easily guess, it is you, the player, who will help him in this.

Compared to its predecessor Commander Keen 2:The Earth Explodes has not changed either. The authors left the player a free hand in the choice of location, so Billy can move freely on the alien ship and defeat the boards in any order. In the platform part we still jump on numerous platforms, eliminate enemies with a gun and try to destroy the X-14 Tantalus Ray cannon, provided that the cannons are in the given stage. If Keen dies while completing a quest, the player goes back to the spacecraft map, losing one of the additional "live".

Technically, the second Commander Keen hasn't changed much either, so we have EGA graphics and PC Speaker sounds. The authors, on the other hand, showed greater inventiveness in creating traps. In The Earth Explodes finally appear mobile platforms, as well as light switches in stages where Keen must move in total darkness.

Please let us know if you have any comments or suggestions regarding this description.

Last updated on August 14, 2015