Masters of Doom by David Kushner

office to
     come up with the game. Tom was quick to point out that, because they were using this
     console-style technology, they should make a console-style game, something like Mario
     but different. Fueled by the energy, he was quick to volunteer himself with a fair
     amount of the bravado that was becoming a requisite part of their clan.
    “Come on, what theme do you want?” Tom said. “Tell me. I can do anything. How about
     science fiction?”
    They liked the idea. “Why don’t we do something,” Carmack said, “where a little kid
     genius saves the world or something like that? Mmm.”
    “Okay, yeah!” Tom said. “I have a great idea for something like that.” And in a blur
     he sped from the room and locked himself in his office in the Apple II department.
     He could feel his head opening up, the ideas pouring out in what sounded like the
     voice of Walter Winchell. Tom had long been a huge fan of Warner Bros. cartoons; Chuck
     Jones, the Looney Tunes animator, was a god to him. He’d also watched Dan Aykroyd’s
     impression of
The Untouchables’
Eliot Ness as a kid. He thought about all these things, plus Mario, plus, for flavor,
     a routine by the comedian George Carlin about people who use bay leaves as underarm
     deodorant and go around smelling like bean with bacon soup.
    Tom typed until he had three paragraphs on his paper. Pulling it out of the printer,
     he dashed back into the Gamer’s Edge office and read these words in his best Winchell
     impression:
    Billy Blaze, eight-year-old genius, working diligently in his backyard clubhouse,
     has created an interstellar spaceship from old soup cans, rubber cement, and plastic
     tubing. While his folks are out on the town and the baby sitter is asleep, Billy sneaks
     out to his backyard workshop, dons his brother’s football helmet, and transforms into.
     . . .
Commander Keen—
defender of justice! In his ship, the Bean with Bacon MegaRocket, Keen dispenses justice
     with an iron hand!
    In this episode, aliens from the planet Vorticon VI find out about the eight-year-old
     genius and plan his destruction. While Keen is out exploring the mountains of Mars,
     the Vorticons steal his ship and leave pieces of it around the galaxy! Can Keen recover
     all the pieces of his ship and repel the Vorticon invasion? Will he make it back before
     his parents get home? Stay tuned!
    He looked around. Silence. Then, in a burst, everyone was laughing, even the generally
     stoic John Carmack, who not only laughed but applauded. Commander Keen was on board.
     Where he would take them, they hardly knew.
    The gamers weren’t just Softdisk guys anymore, they were, as they called themselves, the IFD
     guys, co-owners of Ideas from the Deep. Softdisk, as a result, took on an even greater
     pallor. But it was a day job, a job they all needed since there was no real money
     coming in yet and no guarantee that it would come in at all. They decided, then, to
     continue working on titles for Gamer’s Edge during the day while they churned out
     Commander Keen from the lake house at night.
    They became all the more efficient at “borrowing” the Softdisk computers. Every night
     after work they’d back their cars up to the office and load the machines. The next
     morning they’d come in early enough to bring the computers back. They even got a little
     cocky about it. Though the machines were top of the line, they wanted some minor adjustments
     made. Jay began moseying on down to the Softdisk administration office to request
     new parts. Al Vekovius took notice of the requests but didn’t think too much of them.
     He was still gung ho about Gamer’s Edge and the potential to break into the PC marketplace.
     So whatever the gamers wanted, the gamers would have.
    From October to December 1990, they worked virtually nonstop to get Keen done for
     Scott by Christmas. And it wasn’t just one Keen; it was a trilogy called Invasion
     of the Vorticons. Trilogies were common in