Editing Commander Keen (section)

==Reception==
''Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons'' was an immediate hit for Apogee: the company's previous sales levels had been around US$7,000 per month, but by Christmas ''Keen'' already had sales of almost US$30,000. Miller described the game as "a little atom bomb" to magazine editors and BBS controllers when asked about it, and recruited his mother and hired his first employee to handle sales and phone calls from interested players. By June 1991, the game was bringing in over US$60,000 per month.<ref name="MOD6676"/> Chris Parker of ''[[PC Magazine]]'' later in 1991 referred to the game's release as a "tremendous success".<ref name="PCMAG2"/> In 2009, Miller estimated the game's lifetime sales as between 50,000 and 60,000 units.<ref name="20YearsGameUltra"/> A contemporary review by Barry Simon of ''PC Magazine'' praised the game's graphical capabilities as having a "Nintendo feel", though he termed the graphics as "well drawn" but "not spectacular" in terms of resolution. He noted that the game was very much an arcade game that players would not purchase for "its scintillating plot or ground-breaking originality", but said that all three episodes were very fun to play and that the scrolling graphics set it apart from similar games.<ref name="PCMAG1"/> A short summary of the trilogy in 1992 by ''[[PC World]]'' termed it "one of the most spectacular games available" and praised the "superb" sound and graphics,<ref name="PCWORLD"/> and a similar summary in ''[[CQ Amateur Radio]]'' described it as "Nintendo comes to the PC" and the "best action/adventure game" the reviewer had ever seen.<ref name="CQ"/>

After its release in December 1991, ''Goodbye, Galaxy'' met with sales "about a third" of the original trilogy. Scott Miller of Apogee blamed the falling sales on the lack of a third episode, which he felt undercut the shareware model of the game.<ref name="MOD8793"/> Tom Hall has also claimed that the split hurt the sales of the shareware episodes, though he has said that "they still did decently, though".<ref name="3DRretro"/> ''[[PC Zone]]'', in its first issue in 1993, quoted shareware distributors as saying ''Goodbye, Galaxy'' was one of the top shareware sellers of 1992, behind ''Wolfenstein 3D''.<ref name="PCZ"/> [[IGN]] has also referred to the pair of episodes as "Apogee's hottest sellers".<ref name="IGNid"/> Hall has claimed "The Armageddon Machine" as the best ''Commander Keen'' episode and his favorite.<ref name="3DRretro"/> ''Aliens Ate My Babysitter'' also did not sell as well as hoped for by id, which the team partially blamed on what they felt was terrible box art done by a company that had previously designed packaging for [[Lipton]] tea. Despite this, the sales were strong enough that id agreed to use FormGen as a retail publisher for at least two more games.<ref name="MOD8793"/> ''PC Zone'' also stated that the sales of ''Aliens'' through shareware distributors was one of the highest in the shareware market in 1993.<ref name="PCZ"/>

In October 1992, the Shareware Industry Awards gave the ''Commander Keen'' series the "Best Entertainment Software and Best Overall" award.<ref name="PCMAGaward"/> A review of the entire ''Commander Keen'' series in 1993 by [[Sandy Petersen]] in the first "Eye of the Monitor" column for ''[[Dragon (magazine)|Dragon]]'' described the series as action games with "hilarious graphics". Acknowledging its debt to ''Super Mario Bros.'', he called it, especially ''Goodbye, Galaxy'', "one of the best games of its type" and praised it for not being "mindlessly hard", instead requiring some thought to play through, and especially for the humor in the graphics and gameplay.<ref name="Dragon"/> According to [[Steam Spy]], as of June 2016 there are approximately 200,000 owners of the 2007 ''Commander Keen Complete Pack'' on Steam, and approximately 80,000 owners of the ''Keen Dreams'' release.<ref name="SteamSpy1"/><ref name="SteamSpy2"/>

The 2001 ''Commander Keen'' received mixed reviews from critics. The graphics were both praised and criticized; reviewers praised the art style and the "bright and colorful" graphics, but disparaged the "busy" backgrounds and lackluster animations as making the game feel "choppy",<ref name="AGreview"/><ref name="IGNreview"/> and complained that the graphical updates did not reflect the ten years since the last releases.<ref name="GSreview"/> The gameplay similarly received mixed opinions; reviewers were split between praising the difficult, "old school" gameplay as a successful adaptation of the originals and dismissing the "aging" gameplay as sound but not comparing well to more recent games.<ref name="IGNreview"/><ref name="EGreview"/> Reviewers concluded that the game was an "acquired taste" best suited for fans of the original series or younger players.<ref name="AGreview"/><ref name="GSreview"/><ref name="EGreview"/>