Comments on: Half-remembered DOS game from the early '90s

Question: Half-remembered DOS game from the early '90s

Johnny Assay — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:00:40 -0800

Can you help my sister & me identify this half-remembered DOS game? While my sister & I were chatting the other day, we got on the subject of the Marines. I started humming the Marines' Hymn ("From the Halls of Montezuma"), and this twinged a memory in my sis of an old DOS computer game. Here's what we can remember about it:

The theme music was the Marines' Hymn. This much we are certain of.
The name of the game may have been Captain something or Commander something.
There was no save feature, so you had to play through the entire thing in one sitting if you wanted to beat the game.
The game was quite possibly a side-scroller or a top-scroller. We seem to recall that some of the enemies looked like beach balls.
We were playing this game on a DOS machine in the early '90s. It was almost certainly shareware.

Not much to go on, I know, but if any site can recall this bit of computer nerd ephemera, it's Ask MetaFilter. Any thoughts, folks?

By: roue

roue — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:07:39 -0800

Not Montezuma's Revenge?

By: gursky

gursky — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:07:51 -0800

Commander Keen?

By: EatTheWeak

EatTheWeak — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:07:53 -0800

Commander Keen, from ID software? Maybe? I can't remember if it had a save feature or not.

By: EatTheWeak

EatTheWeak — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:08:58 -0800

But it did switch between top and side scrolling - top, to choose levels, side, to play levels. (damn your swift posting, gursky!)

By: zouhair

zouhair — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:11:32 -0800

captain?? or Commander??

By: blueberry

blueberry — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:50:18 -0800

This page seems to think the game is "[The Adventures of] Captain Comic.

By: naju

naju — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:58:27 -0800

This video of the first level in Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy has beach balls and Marines Hymn-like music.

By: naju

naju — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:01:02 -0800

And here's the video for Captain Comic.

By: aparrish

aparrish — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:30:56 -0800

Definitely Captain Comic. Just loaded it up and I'm listening to the Halls of Montezuma right now. The Beach Ball is listed as an enemy right there on the title screen...

By: headlessagnew

headlessagnew — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:38:26 -0800

For what it's worth, the sequel was pretty awesome, and seems to be all over the abandonware sites.

By: goingonit

goingonit — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:26:20 -0800

As a Canadian who started playing computer games in the mid-90s, I will forever think of the marines' hymn as "the Captain Comic song".

By: Johnny Assay

Johnny Assay — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 05:36:20 -0800

I watched naju's video and all the memories came flooding back. Thanks for the nostalgia trip, everyone!

Special thanks to those who keep the spirit of Commander Keen alive, even if it wasn't the right answer here. Those games were ten different kinds of awesome.

By: collocation

collocation — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 07:35:26 -0800

Commander Keen! Oh gosh, the mention of that brought back all sorts of memories. I'm glad it was mentioned even though it wasn't the answer to your question.

By: anthill

anthill — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 09:35:12 -0800

Ah, Captain Comic. The teleporter wand kicked ass.