With this TTL's 1998 E3 come and gone, here is my contribution to Sega's 1998 line-up.
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Before I begin my retrospective on Commander Keen: Mars’ Most Wanted, I would like to preface with my story of how I became an aficionado for the Sega Saturn. My parents gave me a Sega Genesis with Mega Charger for Christmas 1994 and as with many other people of that generation, when I came to them to ask for a Saturn the following Christmas, they flat out refused. They bought me a “Sega machine” the previous year, shouldn’t I have appreciated the one I had? Despite my incessant pleas, they were steadfast in their decision. However, we did eventually come to a compromise. If I managed to earn to half the money needed for a Saturn, they would provide the other half. So I spent the first six months shoveling neighbors’ walks, moving lawns, and other sorts of odd jobs scraping the money I wanted to buy a Saturn and a couple games. Imagine the pride I felt when I finally bought one in summer of 1996 and Sonic the Hedgehog 4 as well as The Universe is Toast later that year. While the Ultra Nintendo was definitely a superior system in a sense with a strong library, the Sega Saturn represented more than to me. It stood for accomplishment and that I could achieve anything when I set my mind to a specific goal.
As such, the Ultra Nintendo launch did not affect me that much, even when my classmates kept insisting that Sega was essentially “dead.” One of my friends managed to buy one (or rather, his parents because he was autistic and did not like going out) managed to buy one at launch and he invited me over to his house on the following weekend where we played Super Mario Dimensions, Ultra Mario Kart, and Castlevania. Don’t get me, I like the games but they lacked the “spark” I felt that Sonic and Sega’s stable of characters had. Personally, playing Super Mario Dimensions left me hungering more for another Commander Keen game than anything else.
Shortly after Tom Hall and John Romero completed The Universe is Toast, Romero parted ways with Hall and Ion Storm to id Software to work on Daikatana and other games for the Ultra Nintendo. Encouraged with the modest success of UiT, Hall set out to make the first true 3D platformer of the series. It is work noting that despite similar gameplay mechanics; Super Mario Dimensions had no direct influence on Mars’ Most Wanted.
“We pretty much had a working alpha build of the engine around this time last year. So no, we didn’t set out to rip off Mario.” Hall told Electronic Gaming Monthly in an interview when asked about Super Mario Dimensions for 1998’s E3 issue, “Though I admit that I spent a day waiting in line for an Ultra Nintendo and workplace productivity suffered afterwards (laughs). Tom [Kalinske] told me that the Saturn needed an answer to Super Mario Dimensions and the next Sonic game was a ways off. I didn’t want to disappoint after the faith he showed in us with The Universe is Toast.”
And so Sega released Commander Keen: Episode 10 – Mars’ Most Wanted in autumn 1998. While ostensibly a 3D platformer, the game still maintained the “run and gun” and stealth elements of its predecessor but expanded on it immensely. Keen 10 had more weapons, more playable characters, and even more animated cutscenes. In terms of weaponry Keen had the following in his arsenal:
In addition to the new weapons, Mars’ Most Wanted also included new characters to play as. Returning from Secret of the Oracle are Princess Lindsay and the cowardly, but lovable Page as well as Eddie the Yeti from Into the Inferno. Each character plays different; Keen being the jack-of-all trades in terms of jumping, speed, and strength. Princess Lindsay’s jumps are much more floaty, but that and her ability to hover make precision jumps easier, but she takes more recoil when hit. Eddie has the worst jumping ability and cannot use weapons in one-player, but he is immensely strong and can throw objects (including enemies!) as well as stomp the ground and perform body slams. The Page—oh, the Page. The Page, unlike the others, can take unlimited hits and has unlimited ammo as well but the caveat is that not only does the game throws more enemies at you—it outright mocks you whenever you play as him, refuses to save your progress, and closes off the secret areas with a sign reading “No Pages Allowed.” Also of note is a new “auto-target” system that allows players to lock-on to targets by pressing the L shoulder button. Granted, the Page is so horrible at aiming, this feature will not work for him. Poor guy is the universe’s chew toy here.
As for the story and levels, the game begins during middle of his science class (with Ben Stein making a voice cameo as Mr. Boreski) when Billy Blaze receives a transmission from the Martian Regent demanding that he meet him outside. Upon excusing himself to go to the bathroom, Billy must navigate the halls of his school and avoid hall monitors and crazed janitors to make it outside. Not bad for an introductory level with introduces the player to both the run-and-gun and stealth elements. The level even presents us with something of an optional mini-boss in the librarian, Ms. Shuster, tries to throw the book at you (literally!) for making noise.
Once Billy successfully escapes from the school, he meets with the Regent who then has him arrested on charges of heresy and theft. Apparently, Commander Keen stole the planet’s five sacred treasures and hidden them. Despite Billy’s protests, the Regent and his armed escort takes Billy to Mars for his (show) trial and execution. Princess Lindsay, having received word of Keen’s plight and believes his innocence, attempts to secure his release through diplomacy. However, the Regent refuses to budge so, she decides to break Keen out herself in the second level.
Hall admitted that the Princess’ jailbreak scene was a deliberate inversion of the “hero saves princess” trope. I recall watching an episode of GameTV where Brittany suggested they retire Dr. Robotnik because, and I quote, “He's the same guy, he's got the same plan every game.” In the wake of the Super Mario Dimensions, I often asked the same of Bowser because with only a few exceptions, it was Bowser with the same plan over and over with kidnapping Peach. When the Page begs Princess not to go rescue Keen she remarks of how “tedious” the “hero saves princess from villain” cliché is and now it’s her turn.
Once Princess Lindsay saves an indignant Keen from the Regent’s Castle, the game let you choose from five “worlds” to retrieve the Sacred Treasures (really children’s toys from Earth.) Each world has three levels plus a boss battle. Once the player completes these levels, they return to Mars for another two levels plus boss bring the level count up to twenty-three so far. They are as follows:
Once you complete these five levels and collect the five sacred treasures, Keen and his crew head back to Mars to face the Regent and his army. The levels here are three-dimensional recreations of a select few from the first Keen game, Marooned on Mars. Once you storm the castle, the Regent attacks you in a giant mech for a multi-part boss battle where you must destroy the legs, then the torso, and finally the head. When the dust clears, the reveals that Commander Keen did steal the sacred treasures, just not this universe’s Keen. His counterpart from the “Nega-Verse” Captain Chaos arrived in this universe when McMire’s Universal Toaster Cannon self-destructed. He then sent Keen and his friends on this solar goose chase to gather information oh his “Posi-Verse” self, and now has all he needs to invade this universe. The main game ends with a climatic dogfight between Keen’s Bacon-With-Beans Megarocket and Chaos’ Beans-N-Pork Ultrarocket ripped straight out of Star Fox 2. While the game “ends” with Chaos retreating to the Nega-Verse, the game still has its secrets.
Throughout the game Keen and friends can find sixty mysterious “relics” scattered across the six worlds. Once the player collects all the sixty, three new portals open inside the solar system, which Keen leaves to investigate. These portals take you to three new worlds from previous Sega games.
As with the previous six worlds, these worlds also contain an additional twelve relics. These relics require some keen vision and precision platforming skills that leave no room for error and are hands down the hardest to obtain in the game. However, when you do obtain them that open up the final secret level of the game.
Once the player completes Sonic’s world, they unlock the true ending of the game where Keen discovers that the very fabric of the universe is unraveling. Every single parallel universe is beginning to collapse on each other, opening more and more of these “Genesis Portals.” However, he then realizes that he accidentally cut class and rushes back Earth. He returns home where his anger parents ground him for a week, which means he’s “stuck” on Earth for the time being. Meanwhile, Captain Chaos plots to take advantage of the collapse.
These secret worlds made the game quite rewarding and drew Keen (and Ion Storm itself) closer to Sega. Some wondered why they chose to showcase levels from dormant franchises rather than active ones like Virtua Fighter or Panzer Dragoon. Tom Hall explained that it was Tom Kalinske’s idea to see if their appearance would stoke new interest in Alex Kidd, Shinobi, and Streets of Rage. As for Sonic, Sega and Ion Storm included him to build hype. The demo video for Mars’ Most Wanted at 1998’s E3 included a five-second clip of Keen and Sonic posing together, which created tremendous buzz for the title. Rumors of how to access Sonic swirled on the Internet in the weeks after the game released. None of them were true though, and most of us had to slog through the grueling challenge to access the level.
So did it work? In simple terms: yes. Mars Most Wanted was one of the Saturn’s most successful titles that year and far outsold The Universe is Toast. It did not win any game of the year awards, but it scored highly across the board and critics lauded the variety of game play and humor. The game was its less punishing difficulty. Yes, the game still had one-hit kills, but the AA Batteries (essentially what coins are to Mario and rings are to Sonic) scattered across the levels award you with “force fields” with every fifty you collect. Since batteries were plentiful, it made the game less frustrating for newcomers. Also, unlike coins and rings, the batteries within the game also functioned as currency to buy weapons and ammo at the weapons asteroid. Very useful since death meant losing your weapons, all you needed was to farm batteries to regain them.
Though it was not a selling feature of the game, the multiplayer was actually pretty good as well. Unlike Goldeneye, it was completely a third-person perspective with six arenas to choose from (seven after you unlock and complete Sonic’s World.) However, you had a choice of twenty characters to play as, including Mr. Hiller, the game’s thinly veiled Hitler parody. After particularly intense Goldeneye sessions, my friends and I would hook up the Saturn and play a game of “Get Hitler” where one player would choose Mr. Hiller and the others would work together to hunt him down and open fire on him (Mr. Hiller cannot return fire as per the rules.) As much as I would like to take credit for creating the game, I must give the credit to the hosts of GameTV for it and the horrible German accents. Sadly, because of Mr. Hiller, Germany banned Mars’ Most Wanted until Sega released a truncated European version of the game six months later.
As for any other thoughts on the game, I will leave you with the words of Tom Hall, reflecting on the game’s release ten years later in 2008.
“Was Mars’ Most Wanted a Mario-killer? No it wasn’t, but it wasn’t supposed to be. I set out to make the best Commander Keen game I could and I personally believed that Sega was the best platform to do it. I love playing Ultra Nintendo games. L-O-V-E them. However, I set out to make as subversive a game as possible and the Nintendo/Sony juggernaut was, quite frankly, the establishment and I don’t believe the humor could have worked if we made it for the Ultra Nintendo. Sega was clearly the underdog and we were poking the ribs of the giant. What I think surprised critics and the audience the most was how much we jammed into the game. Hell, it was a bear jamming it into one CD, but we did it.
“Looking back on it now, Mars' Most Wanted was a hodge podge of several games held together with duct tape. Maybe that fit in with the feel of what Commander Keen was supposed to be: an eight-year-old boy genius who built a spaceship out of household gadgets and has adventures across the galaxy. It's unfair to compare it to Super Mario Dimensions and vice versa. Both games were their own thing and Commander Keen was something neither Nintendo nor Sony could replicate.”
-from the blog "The Musing Platypus" by B. Ronning, March 14, 2013
OOC: Here is the voice cast list for Mars' Most Wanted.
Kath Soucie as Commander Keen/Captain Chaos
Cree Summer as Princess Lindsay
Rob Paulsen as The Page/Goon Wanyesky/"Mr. Hiller"
Frank Welker as Eddie the Yeti/Arthur Blaze
Ben Stein as Mr. Boreski
Tress MacNeille as Ms. Shuster/Susan Blaze
Maurice LaMarche as The Regent/Gio Giovanni
Brad Garret as Grunda
Jess Harnell as Brutus/Lorenzo Giovanni/Mr. X
Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Satin
Tara Strong as Alex Kidd
Daniel Dae Kim as Joe Mushashi
Christopher Daniel Barnes as Axel
Jennifer Hale as Blaze
Dorian Harewood as Adam
Jaleel White as Sonic the Hedgehog
Jim Cummings as Dr. "Ivo" Robotnik
--
Before I begin my retrospective on Commander Keen: Mars’ Most Wanted, I would like to preface with my story of how I became an aficionado for the Sega Saturn. My parents gave me a Sega Genesis with Mega Charger for Christmas 1994 and as with many other people of that generation, when I came to them to ask for a Saturn the following Christmas, they flat out refused. They bought me a “Sega machine” the previous year, shouldn’t I have appreciated the one I had? Despite my incessant pleas, they were steadfast in their decision. However, we did eventually come to a compromise. If I managed to earn to half the money needed for a Saturn, they would provide the other half. So I spent the first six months shoveling neighbors’ walks, moving lawns, and other sorts of odd jobs scraping the money I wanted to buy a Saturn and a couple games. Imagine the pride I felt when I finally bought one in summer of 1996 and Sonic the Hedgehog 4 as well as The Universe is Toast later that year. While the Ultra Nintendo was definitely a superior system in a sense with a strong library, the Sega Saturn represented more than to me. It stood for accomplishment and that I could achieve anything when I set my mind to a specific goal.
As such, the Ultra Nintendo launch did not affect me that much, even when my classmates kept insisting that Sega was essentially “dead.” One of my friends managed to buy one (or rather, his parents because he was autistic and did not like going out) managed to buy one at launch and he invited me over to his house on the following weekend where we played Super Mario Dimensions, Ultra Mario Kart, and Castlevania. Don’t get me, I like the games but they lacked the “spark” I felt that Sonic and Sega’s stable of characters had. Personally, playing Super Mario Dimensions left me hungering more for another Commander Keen game than anything else.
Shortly after Tom Hall and John Romero completed The Universe is Toast, Romero parted ways with Hall and Ion Storm to id Software to work on Daikatana and other games for the Ultra Nintendo. Encouraged with the modest success of UiT, Hall set out to make the first true 3D platformer of the series. It is work noting that despite similar gameplay mechanics; Super Mario Dimensions had no direct influence on Mars’ Most Wanted.
“We pretty much had a working alpha build of the engine around this time last year. So no, we didn’t set out to rip off Mario.” Hall told Electronic Gaming Monthly in an interview when asked about Super Mario Dimensions for 1998’s E3 issue, “Though I admit that I spent a day waiting in line for an Ultra Nintendo and workplace productivity suffered afterwards (laughs). Tom [Kalinske] told me that the Saturn needed an answer to Super Mario Dimensions and the next Sonic game was a ways off. I didn’t want to disappoint after the faith he showed in us with The Universe is Toast.”
And so Sega released Commander Keen: Episode 10 – Mars’ Most Wanted in autumn 1998. While ostensibly a 3D platformer, the game still maintained the “run and gun” and stealth elements of its predecessor but expanded on it immensely. Keen 10 had more weapons, more playable characters, and even more animated cutscenes. In terms of weaponry Keen had the following in his arsenal:
- Neural Stunner – Keen and crew’s standard side arm. It immobilizes small to medium sized enemies, but completely ineffective on larger enemies and robots.
- Staple Gun – Keen modified his father’s staple gun into a rapid-fire weapon that sacrifices power for furious speed.
- Glue Cannon – Essentially equivalent to a shotgun with a very slow rate of fire that traps any non-boss in sticky goop.
- Lightning Pistol – This is essentially a version of the Neural Stunner that works on robotic enemies, though it electrocutes organic enemies in Looney Tunes fashion. You can also use it to turn on certain machinery
- Super Incinerator 5000 – Keen also modified his own Power Drencher water gun into a flamethrower. It has limited range but is horribly powerful and can burn certain plants.
- Bottle Rocket Launcher – As it says on the tin. Launches explosive soda bottles that clear large areas and probably the hardest to find ammo for.
- Poultry Buster – This weapon is only available in Lunar Meadows and the game’s multi-player mode. It’s a cannon that fires chickens at enemies. In a nod to the Legend of Zelda, even the chicken impacts the target; an entire flock of them descends upon said target and attacks with complete impunity.
- Tractor Beam – This rare-but-extremely fun weapon picks up any object (including enemies) and uses them as ammunition. In the absence of useable ammo, it will pluck a meteor from the sky. Keen and company can also use it as a grappling hook in certain situations.
In addition to the new weapons, Mars’ Most Wanted also included new characters to play as. Returning from Secret of the Oracle are Princess Lindsay and the cowardly, but lovable Page as well as Eddie the Yeti from Into the Inferno. Each character plays different; Keen being the jack-of-all trades in terms of jumping, speed, and strength. Princess Lindsay’s jumps are much more floaty, but that and her ability to hover make precision jumps easier, but she takes more recoil when hit. Eddie has the worst jumping ability and cannot use weapons in one-player, but he is immensely strong and can throw objects (including enemies!) as well as stomp the ground and perform body slams. The Page—oh, the Page. The Page, unlike the others, can take unlimited hits and has unlimited ammo as well but the caveat is that not only does the game throws more enemies at you—it outright mocks you whenever you play as him, refuses to save your progress, and closes off the secret areas with a sign reading “No Pages Allowed.” Also of note is a new “auto-target” system that allows players to lock-on to targets by pressing the L shoulder button. Granted, the Page is so horrible at aiming, this feature will not work for him. Poor guy is the universe’s chew toy here.
As for the story and levels, the game begins during middle of his science class (with Ben Stein making a voice cameo as Mr. Boreski) when Billy Blaze receives a transmission from the Martian Regent demanding that he meet him outside. Upon excusing himself to go to the bathroom, Billy must navigate the halls of his school and avoid hall monitors and crazed janitors to make it outside. Not bad for an introductory level with introduces the player to both the run-and-gun and stealth elements. The level even presents us with something of an optional mini-boss in the librarian, Ms. Shuster, tries to throw the book at you (literally!) for making noise.
Once Billy successfully escapes from the school, he meets with the Regent who then has him arrested on charges of heresy and theft. Apparently, Commander Keen stole the planet’s five sacred treasures and hidden them. Despite Billy’s protests, the Regent and his armed escort takes Billy to Mars for his (show) trial and execution. Princess Lindsay, having received word of Keen’s plight and believes his innocence, attempts to secure his release through diplomacy. However, the Regent refuses to budge so, she decides to break Keen out herself in the second level.
Hall admitted that the Princess’ jailbreak scene was a deliberate inversion of the “hero saves princess” trope. I recall watching an episode of GameTV where Brittany suggested they retire Dr. Robotnik because, and I quote, “He's the same guy, he's got the same plan every game.” In the wake of the Super Mario Dimensions, I often asked the same of Bowser because with only a few exceptions, it was Bowser with the same plan over and over with kidnapping Peach. When the Page begs Princess not to go rescue Keen she remarks of how “tedious” the “hero saves princess from villain” cliché is and now it’s her turn.
Once Princess Lindsay saves an indignant Keen from the Regent’s Castle, the game let you choose from five “worlds” to retrieve the Sacred Treasures (really children’s toys from Earth.) Each world has three levels plus a boss battle. Once the player completes these levels, they return to Mars for another two levels plus boss bring the level count up to twenty-three so far. They are as follows:
- Lunar Meadows – Earth Moon’s is apparently the world’s largest dairy-producing planetoid in the galaxy for some reason. Keen and crew must don their space suits and fight their way through alien farmers wield pitchforks, kung-fu cows, and kamikaze chickens to the main dairy. The boss of this world is a giant combine reminiscent of the mangling machine from Keen Must Die.
- Venusian Jungle – Apparently Venus is actually a jungle world filled with saber-toothed cats, rampaging mammoths, and overly affectionate amazons clad in leopard-skins who can crush you to death with their hugs. The boss of this world is Gurtha (voiced by Brad Garrett), their Queen who chases you through the jungle where you must lead her into hazards. Interestingly, she and Eddie hook up in the end credits.
- Uranian Sewers – Looks like Keen and crew are going to sewers of Uranus where there are alligators, turtles, and mutant Dopefish in addition to easily ignited methane. It’s a bit of a labyrinth, which can lead you in circles if you’re not careful. The bosses of this level are the Mediocre Gio Cousins™, two morbidly obese electricians envious of their plumber “rivals.” Their main method of attack is body slam you and “release” methane on impact. The Super Incinerator 5000 comes in handy for this fight.
- Io’s Inferno – This level takes you to the Jupiter’s volcanic satellite and a parody of Dante’s Inferno. Many of the enemies here are cartoon personifications of the seven deadly sins and even a few historical figures like Brutus, Napoleon, and “Mr. Hiller” show up in this galactic pit of torment. The boss of this level is Mr. Satin (voiced by none other than Leonard Nimoy), who refuses to let you leave the moon without besting him in a rhythm-based contest. However, you will need to play dirty get through this one.
- North of Pluto – Now we journey to the (dwarf) planet known Pluto where the inhabitants speak in heavy Minnesotan or Canadian accents. Since the hockey playoffs are on, most of the population has turned into bloodthirsty rioters and even the once-placid wildlife (again, based on animals associated with Canada) is trying to kill you. Just beware of the boss, Goon Wanyesky, who was a mean slap shot he will use on you, as the puck.
Once you complete these five levels and collect the five sacred treasures, Keen and his crew head back to Mars to face the Regent and his army. The levels here are three-dimensional recreations of a select few from the first Keen game, Marooned on Mars. Once you storm the castle, the Regent attacks you in a giant mech for a multi-part boss battle where you must destroy the legs, then the torso, and finally the head. When the dust clears, the reveals that Commander Keen did steal the sacred treasures, just not this universe’s Keen. His counterpart from the “Nega-Verse” Captain Chaos arrived in this universe when McMire’s Universal Toaster Cannon self-destructed. He then sent Keen and his friends on this solar goose chase to gather information oh his “Posi-Verse” self, and now has all he needs to invade this universe. The main game ends with a climatic dogfight between Keen’s Bacon-With-Beans Megarocket and Chaos’ Beans-N-Pork Ultrarocket ripped straight out of Star Fox 2. While the game “ends” with Chaos retreating to the Nega-Verse, the game still has its secrets.
Throughout the game Keen and friends can find sixty mysterious “relics” scattered across the six worlds. Once the player collects all the sixty, three new portals open inside the solar system, which Keen leaves to investigate. These portals take you to three new worlds from previous Sega games.
- Miracle World – Keen visits the world of former Sega mascot, Alex Kidd. Most of the levels take their inspiration from Alex Kidd in Miracle World for the Master System. Possibly the most humorous moment comes when Keen confronts Janken’s henchmen at the end of each level. Like Indiana Jones and the Swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark, he simply shoots them (Much to Alex Kidd’s shock.)
- Planet Shinobi – Keen teams up with Joe Musashi to save his bride from Zeed in an alternate take on 1989’s Revenge of Shinobi. Each of the three levels contains a boss from the game, including “Spider-Man” (with Marvel’s approval.)
- The City – Again, Keen teams up with Axel, Blaze, and Adam from Streets of Rage to clean of the streets and rid the City of Mr. X’s influence.
As with the previous six worlds, these worlds also contain an additional twelve relics. These relics require some keen vision and precision platforming skills that leave no room for error and are hands down the hardest to obtain in the game. However, when you do obtain them that open up the final secret level of the game.
- Sonic’s World – Keen visits a faithful recreation of the Green hill Zone from the original Sonic the Hedgehog. Jaleel White and Jim Cummings reprise the roles as Keen teams up with Sonic to keep Robotnik from using the power of the portal. The game provides you with a Tractor Beam weapon where Keen uses Sonic (in this spin form) as a weapon against Robotnik’s “Wrecking Ball” boss from the original game.
Once the player completes Sonic’s world, they unlock the true ending of the game where Keen discovers that the very fabric of the universe is unraveling. Every single parallel universe is beginning to collapse on each other, opening more and more of these “Genesis Portals.” However, he then realizes that he accidentally cut class and rushes back Earth. He returns home where his anger parents ground him for a week, which means he’s “stuck” on Earth for the time being. Meanwhile, Captain Chaos plots to take advantage of the collapse.
These secret worlds made the game quite rewarding and drew Keen (and Ion Storm itself) closer to Sega. Some wondered why they chose to showcase levels from dormant franchises rather than active ones like Virtua Fighter or Panzer Dragoon. Tom Hall explained that it was Tom Kalinske’s idea to see if their appearance would stoke new interest in Alex Kidd, Shinobi, and Streets of Rage. As for Sonic, Sega and Ion Storm included him to build hype. The demo video for Mars’ Most Wanted at 1998’s E3 included a five-second clip of Keen and Sonic posing together, which created tremendous buzz for the title. Rumors of how to access Sonic swirled on the Internet in the weeks after the game released. None of them were true though, and most of us had to slog through the grueling challenge to access the level.
So did it work? In simple terms: yes. Mars Most Wanted was one of the Saturn’s most successful titles that year and far outsold The Universe is Toast. It did not win any game of the year awards, but it scored highly across the board and critics lauded the variety of game play and humor. The game was its less punishing difficulty. Yes, the game still had one-hit kills, but the AA Batteries (essentially what coins are to Mario and rings are to Sonic) scattered across the levels award you with “force fields” with every fifty you collect. Since batteries were plentiful, it made the game less frustrating for newcomers. Also, unlike coins and rings, the batteries within the game also functioned as currency to buy weapons and ammo at the weapons asteroid. Very useful since death meant losing your weapons, all you needed was to farm batteries to regain them.
Though it was not a selling feature of the game, the multiplayer was actually pretty good as well. Unlike Goldeneye, it was completely a third-person perspective with six arenas to choose from (seven after you unlock and complete Sonic’s World.) However, you had a choice of twenty characters to play as, including Mr. Hiller, the game’s thinly veiled Hitler parody. After particularly intense Goldeneye sessions, my friends and I would hook up the Saturn and play a game of “Get Hitler” where one player would choose Mr. Hiller and the others would work together to hunt him down and open fire on him (Mr. Hiller cannot return fire as per the rules.) As much as I would like to take credit for creating the game, I must give the credit to the hosts of GameTV for it and the horrible German accents. Sadly, because of Mr. Hiller, Germany banned Mars’ Most Wanted until Sega released a truncated European version of the game six months later.
As for any other thoughts on the game, I will leave you with the words of Tom Hall, reflecting on the game’s release ten years later in 2008.
“Was Mars’ Most Wanted a Mario-killer? No it wasn’t, but it wasn’t supposed to be. I set out to make the best Commander Keen game I could and I personally believed that Sega was the best platform to do it. I love playing Ultra Nintendo games. L-O-V-E them. However, I set out to make as subversive a game as possible and the Nintendo/Sony juggernaut was, quite frankly, the establishment and I don’t believe the humor could have worked if we made it for the Ultra Nintendo. Sega was clearly the underdog and we were poking the ribs of the giant. What I think surprised critics and the audience the most was how much we jammed into the game. Hell, it was a bear jamming it into one CD, but we did it.
“Looking back on it now, Mars' Most Wanted was a hodge podge of several games held together with duct tape. Maybe that fit in with the feel of what Commander Keen was supposed to be: an eight-year-old boy genius who built a spaceship out of household gadgets and has adventures across the galaxy. It's unfair to compare it to Super Mario Dimensions and vice versa. Both games were their own thing and Commander Keen was something neither Nintendo nor Sony could replicate.”
-from the blog "The Musing Platypus" by B. Ronning, March 14, 2013
OOC: Here is the voice cast list for Mars' Most Wanted.
Kath Soucie as Commander Keen/Captain Chaos
Cree Summer as Princess Lindsay
Rob Paulsen as The Page/Goon Wanyesky/"Mr. Hiller"
Frank Welker as Eddie the Yeti/Arthur Blaze
Ben Stein as Mr. Boreski
Tress MacNeille as Ms. Shuster/Susan Blaze
Maurice LaMarche as The Regent/Gio Giovanni
Brad Garret as Grunda
Jess Harnell as Brutus/Lorenzo Giovanni/Mr. X
Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Satin
Tara Strong as Alex Kidd
Daniel Dae Kim as Joe Mushashi
Christopher Daniel Barnes as Axel
Jennifer Hale as Blaze
Dorian Harewood as Adam
Jaleel White as Sonic the Hedgehog
Jim Cummings as Dr. "Ivo" Robotnik
