Commander Keen 3: Keen Must DieCommander Keen 2: The Earth ExplodesCommander KeenCommander Keen 4: Secret of the OracleCommander Keen 6: Aliens Ate My Babysitter!
And before that, there was Softdisk. It was this small Louisiana-based developer that brought all four founding members together. Softdisk was best known for the diskmag, from which they took their name; a monthly floppy disk for the Apple II that came packed with utilities, articles, and a few games here and there. For the programmers, this wasn't a great deal. They would spend their time coding a game that would never see store shelves for a salary check and no royalties.
Initially, all the members that would form id worked separately. The one-man development team was still very much a reality, especially for the small-scale productions Softdisk needed, but it wouldn't be long before John Romero and John Carmack started working together, collaborating on an RPG called Dark Designs II, a sequel to a solo project Carmack had finished not long before. Within a few months time, they would be joined by designer Tom Hall and artist Adrian Carmack, and in 1990, they started work on a bi-monthly disk called Gamer's Edge, developing new games on a tight schedule. Their first project was a remake of Romero's older Apple II game, Dangerous Dave, and their first original product was The Catacomb, a title that is sometimes considered retroactively to be the beginning of id Software (and was even marketed as such by Softdisk after id's breakout success).
The fast-paced 2D corridor-crawler might be unassuming, but it was the start of something. Not only did it cement the working relationship that would drive them into the mainstream, but it was the beginning of a franchise, and the foundation for some of the conventions id would later put to use in their first-person shooters. It even used the "Alt" key to allow the player to strafe and fire. An enhanced version, Catacomb II, followed not long after, and eventually became a stand-alone release (minus the Roman numeral).
Shortly after, the team worked on Slordax, a vertically scrolling space shooter in the console vein. It wasn't terribly elaborate, but it was technically impressive for the time, with 16-color graphics that scrolled smoothly. Carmack was pretty sure he was onto something, and he continued his work to see if he could make the screen scroll just as smoothly in all directions. One day in September, he made that breakthrough.
It came after a night of late work with Tom Hall. The two worked well into the wee hours of the morning applying this new technology to a platform game. In the absence of time to whip up original graphics, they copped the first level from Super Mario Bros 3 and dropped in sprites from an older game of Romero's, Dangerous Dave. They called the one-level demo "Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement."
John Romero saw what they had done the next day, and he knew right then and there that they were on to something huge: a platform game that could really compete with what the NES was doing. But the others in the office didn't share their enthusiasm. The code violated the company policy by depending on 16-color EGA hardware without supporting older 4-color CGA cards, and their fellow coders seemed unimpressed. Clearly, this was bigger than Softdisk. This was their ticket out. That day, September 20, 1990, id Software was born.
Breaking Away
Their first move was to try to take their little experiment and turn it into a polished pitch demo for a PC version of Super Mario Bros. 3. They sent it to Nintendo, but they said that, while they were impressed, they didn't want to see their games leave their own hardware at that time. So instead, they reached out to Scott Miller, who had been in contact with Romero.
Miller and his company, Apogee Software, had been pioneering a new business model. They were offering their games as shareware, a term for full products distributed freely that customers would pay for only if they chose to, strictly on the honor system. What Scott did differently was to create companion games for his shareware products that were only available commercially, effectively making the shareware products very generous demos that could stand on their own.
So the newly formed id Software set to work on a trilogy of platformers to fit Apogee's model. They starred a boy named Billy Blaze, and chronicled his intergalactic adventures as Commander Keen. The title grew from a simple Mario clone to a game all its own with a unique pogo stick gimmick, and a non-linear structure that encouraged exploration. Even though it was fall by the time the project had begun, Apogee released the first episode on December 14, and the other two not far behind.
Commander Keen was completely unlike anything the shareware market had seen up to that point, and the free distribution of the first episode helped the game travel far. But you can't keep an overnight success like that a secret for long. Despite having christened themselves id Software, they were all still employed by Softdisk, who were not pleased that their employees were sneaking around working for themselves.
Softdisk agreed to let them out of their contract on the agreement that their new company would continue to provide one game every two months for Gamer's Edge. On February 1, 1991, id Software went legit, as a real company. They were in a bind, though. They had their independent ventures to worry about, as well as their contractual demands for Softdisk. Lesser coders would have cut corners, but id decided to work twice as hard.
The first game delivered to Softdisk under their new agreement was a side-scrolling action-platformer called Shadow Knights. It wasn't as pretty as Commander Keen, nor could it match its size and scope, but during a time when console-style games were still a rarity in the MS-DOS world, the ninja action of Shadow Knights still managed to impress. But it was their next game that would prove to be the most popular during their Softdisk stint.
It was time for Dangerous Dave to ride again, and Romero's once generic hero was re-imagined as a shotgun-toting redneck. Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion played nothing like previous Daves. He now had to blast his way through hordes of zombies and monsters that burst into gory "gibs" when shot; a first for id. The reload mechanic added tension to the combat, and the big, detailed sprites made it the best looking game they had produced yet. Dave was a hit, and even after Softdisk and id parted ways, Softdisk produced a pair of sequels to capitalize on the franchise. Likewise, id licensed the engine out to Apogee, who used it to create Bio Menace.
After cranking out so many scrolling platformers in such a short time, Rescue Rover was a real change of pace. Taking a page from Sokoban and Chip's Challenge, this was a logistical puzzle game that had a dopey-looking hillbilly push crates around to rescue his dog. It added lasers and mirrors to the mix, as well as various enemies, making for some more complex puzzles than similar games before it. While it wasn't one of id's more impressive games, Rover had a following, and id would create a sequel a few months later with an improved engine and better sound.
With the end of their Softdisk contract nowhere in sight, there were just two months left for the next game. Hovertank 3-D was released in April of 1991, and it marked a bold new direction for the developer, but it's doubtful that even they knew how it would foreshadow the future. The post-nuclear rescue mission used a new rendering technique pioneered by Carmack to push fast and fluid 3D graphics. It was their first foray into the first-person shooter genre. Of course, this wasn't much like Wolfenstein, but the labyrinthine corridors were a far cry from Battlezone. The small studio had gone from putting PC gaming on par with the 8-bit consoles to doing something that completely blew them away. Hovertank 3-D wasn't just a technically impressive prototype, though, it was a unique, addictive design that still holds up today as an old school masterpiece.
Keen Returns
While id Software slaved away to pay out their obligations to Softdisk, they realized that they had a hit series to follow up on. They needed to return to Commander Keen, but with such a tight schedule to keep, it was difficult to work on the kind of big sequel they wanted to create. And so, Gamer's Edge became the staging ground for Keen's next adventure, a prototype for the new trilogy called Keen Dreams. An out-of-continuity dream of Billy Blaze, it abandoned the pogo stick and ray gun of its processor. Instead, the pajama-clad Billy could toss "flower power" at the vegetables haunting his dreams.
Dreams was never meant to be a true sequel to the original trilogy, but developing the game for Softdisk gave id Software two months to work on a new engine and test out some of their ideas for the real follow-up later that year. It was also during this time that id was joined by Jason Blochowiak from Apogee, who would continue to work with them for the next year or so. The new title featured almost all of the advances id was planning for the games ahead, including a more detailed pseudo-3D view, hills, and support for soundcards. The Keen sequels to come would only raise the value of Keen Dreams, though, which would be marketed as the "lost episode" for years to come. Designer Tom Hall came to regret the move in the end, creating a Keen game for which they would have no ownership, but it accomplished its goal.
Now, id was primed to pounce. They made a sequel to Rescue Rover their next game for Softdisk. With an existing engine and modest demands for graphics, it gave them the time needed to go into full production on a new trilogy of Keen games. Jason and Tom also cranked out a Shanghai clone for Softdisk called Tiles of the Dragon to buy them some more time. Apogee lent them the talents of composer Bobby Prince to bring music to their games for the first time. With months to concentrate on the task, they set their sights on a new trilogy.
Hoping to get some brick and mortar retail action, id cut a deal with FormGen to publish one of the episodes of their new trilogy as a stand-alone retail product, leaving only two episodes for Apogee. All three released in December of '91, giving id their biggest success yet. The new trilogy built on everything the original did, but with polished graphics, catchy music, and a charm that the first could never match. They were the best platformers released on the PC and quickly became Apogee's hottest sellers.
With all the success they could ask for at Apogee, id surely didn't relish having to give their games away to Softdisk, but they had one more title left before their contract was fulfilled. They took the opportunity to say goodbye to the franchise that brought them together a year and a half earlier. They paired the design from The Catacomb with an evolved version of the 3D technology they started with Hovertank.
Softdisk probably didn't even realize what they had on their hands. Catacomb 3-D was stunning, with textured graphics that ran like butter, even on a 16-bit 286. The design was deep and addictive, with a non-linear network of levels full of destructible walls and hidden passages. The first-person shooter was rapidly evolving into the genre that we now know. By the time Softdisk caught on to just how significant it was, id Software had left them for good. They used the Catacomb 3-D engine to push out a trilogy of sequels, but by then it was too late.
Id Software wasn't stupid, you see. They had no problem giving away a gem like Catacomb 3-D, because they already knew they'd make it obsolete in a few months time. In the five months that followed, id polished that engine, moving it to 256-color VGA hardware, adding in doors and levers, and scripting enemies that could patrol, respond to sound, and fire back, rather than just approaching on a zig-zag like in their previous first-person shooters.
In May, they released the fruit of their efforts, Wolfenstein 3-D, a loose interpretation of the Apple II classic, Castle Wolfenstein. It wasn't just the pinnacle of the genre to date, it became the genre. Selectable weapons, ammo conservation, and labyrinthine corridors with colored keys became the new hallmarks of first-person shooters, and the clones began to flood in within just months of its release.
It was the biggest success yet for id Software, Apogee, and indeed the entire shareware industry, not to mention one of the biggest PC games of all time. Shareware gaming had gone from a grass roots movement of small independent games to surpassing the publishing giants so quickly, the industry hardly knew how it even happened. In just two years, a team of four had created nearly twenty games; a library that many would be proud to call a career. But we all know that Wolfenstein 3-D was just the beginning for id, and they soon turned their back on everything they had done prior. For them, these games were just the soldiers they used to storm the castle.
