"Look, what happened back then was just a joke. The Epic Megagames
team were on friendly terms with the id Software people and the
reference to Commander Keen was just a harmless joke, which we
expected them to be capable of taking in good humour. Of course we
never caused - let alone conspired towards - Commander Keen's
downfall."
When asked about her relationship with Apogee's Alabama Smith from
the game Paganitzu, Gillian declined to comment.
But, ignoring his own downfall which
loomed above his helmet like an ominous rain cloud,
Billy began encouraging id Software to continue making The Universe
Is Toast. He was determined to see that the epic story of Commander
Keen would not go unresolved.
"So Billy was always hanging around our
offices and everything, which was okay - he was really into what we were
developing, always helping us improve the quality of the games, but he
did keep going on about the next series of Keen, which we had pretty
much abandoned by that time."
With his career in computer games
painfully on the wane, Billy spent his time promoting new id Software
games at sci-fi and role-playing conventions. However, as Keen's fame
dwindled, the popularity of the Dopefish began to increase steadily.
Billy became restless and often grumpy.
"Every day at the office, Billy would be
babbling on about Commander Keen this, Universe that, and it was
actually getting rather tiring. We at Apogee were all rather fed up with
his winging, actually, so I suggested that in one of our games we put
a secret level in which you could actually kill Commander Keen. Huh-huh,
that was actually rather funny. Uh-huh-huh-huh. Uh-huh-huh-huh-snort!"
"Well you know, we were keeping Billy happy by giving him little
cameos in games like Crystal Caves and Bio Menace. But
he just kept getting more and more bitchy over the fact that his
game was pretty much finished. Now y'see, although my games are
under some competition with those of Max Payne, Max and myself have
reached a mutual understanding so that we don't have to work against
each other's interests. It's all based on trust, something that Billy
didn't have for anybody here. And so one day, after an argument with
Tom and Keith, Billy just stormed out and never came back."
Billy's falling out with id Software left a scar of resentment. When
id produced Doom II, the sequel to their ground-breaking 3d game
Doom, it included a secret level in which the player must kill
Commander Keen to finish the level.
August, 1994. With the toy stores full of
Commander Keen merchandise and kids across America leaping around on
Pogo sticks, Billy's fame and celebrity status seemed under no immediate
threat despite the drop in popularity of the old Commander Keen
computer games. Believing that he could "make it on his own", Billy
Blaze, with the support of his parents and a fleet of lawyers, set about
organizing a Saturday morning television cartoon show: The Heroic
Adventures of Commander Keen. But the media is a difficult thing to
work with, and soon it would turn against Billy, as disaster befell with
the strength of a Quantum Explosion Dynamo.
Suddenly, a freak accident involving a
pogo stick caused Commander Keen merchandise to be banned in a number of
states. With newly-emerging computer games of higher quality than that
of Goodbye, Galaxy, Billy Blaze's celebrity status was fading
rapidly. As the year 1995 progressed, Billy, abandoned by id Software
and forgotten by most people as if he was just a passing fad, tumbled
down the slippery slope of post-stardom.
And when he finally hit post-stardom's
tar-slicked bottom of unpopularity, he began to sink further, into a
world of alcohol binges and petty theft.
The downfall of Commander Keen had begun
in earnest.
