Commander Keen is a series of video games developed by id Software in the early 1990s, which was successful at replicating the side-scrolling action of the NES Super Mario Bros. games in MS-DOS. The cartoon-style platformers are notable for their pioneering use of EGA graphics and shareware distribution, and because they were the first games by id Software (which went on to develop blockbusters like Doom and Quake). The games were also exciting to the PC gaming community of the time because of John Carmack's revolutionary smooth-scrolling graphics engine. Although developed by id, most of the Commander Keen games were published by Apogee Software, an already established MS-DOS shareware game publisher. Tom Hall is Commander Keen ' s designer and the creator of Keen's universe.