Commander Keen Takes a Negative from Nintendo to Create a Classic on Computers – Today in History

Carl Williams writes, "What do you do when you have spent a lot of money and time creating a pretty damn good rendition of Super Mario Bros 3 but for PC? First, you shop it out to Nintendo and when they say no, you take your superior engine and rework the graphics and levels to make something new and unique. This is exactly what John Romero and the rest of the team at IFD (soon to become id Software) did with their PC rendition of Super Mario Bros 3. Nintendo, of course, said no to the port and Romero and the team had to do something so they reworked things and created another iconic classic called Commander Keen. This all happened at the tail end of 1990, 25 years ago, folks."