SpawnPoint - Where Game Begins

The name of this blog refers to a meme that's been swimming around the gaming culture for 17 years. It's become the quintessential Easter egg... similar to the famous Wilhelm scream in movie culture, slipping a Dopefish into a hard-to-find area of a game map is a sly wink to the audience. It says you know your culture! When you learn to recognize it, you start discovering it everywhere, and whenever you see it, you know you're knee-deep in gaming culture.

The Dopefish first appeared in id Software's shareware "Commander Keen" series, all the way back in 1991 when 386 DOS PCs ruled the Earth. Specifically, in "Episode IV: Secret of the Oracle", for which Tom Hall was the creative director. Tom Hall was a venerable member of the staff at id Software, working on the Commander Keen series, Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, and Doom before moving on to Apogee software.

The Dopefish's vocabulary is limited to resonating belches and his thought process, according to the literature, is "swim... swim... hungry" in an endless loop. Curiously, although he is in many games, he is only present as an active character sprite in his original appearance in the fourth Commander Keen game. This occurs in the level "The Well of Wishes".

The quickest way to see the Dopefish in action for yourself is to download Commander Keen #4 (It runs like a top in DOSBox), then start a new game and proceed thusly:

1. Going north, clear Border Village,
2. North again, clear Slug Village,
3. Head due east into the desert, turn north and enter Miragia. This is the toughest part, but it's not that hard: go more-or-less to the low-far right until you come to the far right wall, then hop up through a series of platforms. Avoid the slugs and slug-slime. Use your pogo stick to hop up to another disappearing glass platform and a couple more ledges, and find the wetsuit somewhere up there. Getting the wetsuit is the only way to end the Miragia level anyway.
4. Now exit the desert and go all the way back through Slug Village and enter the water (that's why you need the wetsuit - Keen can't swim!). Go all the way to the bottom-right corner of the water area, the smallest island has a little well on it. That's the Well of Wishes! Enter and swim down.

When you meet Dopefish, you'll probably get eaten. But you have to pass him (in fact several of him!) to clear the level. No matter; there's a 1-up life-water bottle in the lower-left corner of this level, so snag that before you swim right to confront the first Dopefish and you'll be good to go indefinitely!

Dopefish's next appearance was in Apogee's cart-racing game Wacky Wheels, released in 1994. Joe Siegler and Andy Edwardson were batting around ideas for characters in the game, and Siegler wanted to use the Dopefish, but needed id Software's permission. Jay Wilbur at id was kind enough to release the Dopefish for use in the game, simply by faxing a message "use the fish". From there, a legend was born!

From there, the Dopefish found its way, in a viral sort of fashion, into the oddest corners of the gaming world, but always as an image lurking in dark, shadowy corners or on a poster on the wall or even commemorated in a statue. Sometimes he's just a name scribbled on the wall or a cheatcode. The list of titles in which the Dopefish can be spotted reads like a who's-who of influential games in gaming history: Quake 1, 2, and 3, Max Payne, Duke Nukum 3D, Battlezone, Hitman 2, Daikatana, Descent 3, and many more. Sometimes he's only name-checked, with mottoes such as "Dopefish lives!" and "Dopefish forever!"

Some references are obscure in the extreme, such as this message "The Well of Wishes awaits in the Crypt of Decay!", visible only by shooting this lamp on your way to the Nightmare level portal in Quake 1. That refers to the "Well of Wishes" level in Keen #4, and if you activate this Easter egg, you will indeed find yourself looking at a portrait of the Dopefish somewhere along the way soon - if you follow a *very* specific path!

He's even in the GNU free software game Supertux. There, he always appears frozen in the ice, and his presence is usually a marker that there's a secret passage somewhere around. There's talk in the Supertux development Wiki of having the Dopefish return as an enemy in underwater levels. The adoption of the Dopefish into FOSS culture might be a nod to id Software, which has always been open-source friendly enough to allow its games to be ported to Linux.

Dopefish fandom has taken off by now - there's fan-made game mods, screensavers and wallpapers, icons, fan art, T-shirts, coffee mugs, graffiti, and a reference in a Gary Larson "Farside" cartoon. He's also inspired a number of fan pages, and has an underground cult following.

But there's lots more to discover. Here is the official Dopefish page set up by Joe Siegler himself, and if you choose to explore every game listed to track down every sighting, you will experience a host of games both familiar and exotic - a sightseeing tour of the appearances of one of gaming's most obscure celebrities.

Anyway, while I'm only a marginal Dopefish fan myself, I picked him to be the namesake of this gaming blog. To me, he symbolizes all the fun of computer gaming. Passing a challenging level, discovering secret areas, being part of a fringe culture, appreciating the art and creativity that goes into making games, and - most importantly - having a sense of humor about the whole thing.