The Story of the Dopefish
Tom drew a dumb little drawing for a big, dumb fish for the Well of Wishes level in Keen 4.
Adrian Carmack drew a brilliant version of the Dopefish, then John Carmack, based on Tom’s descriptions, made it chase Keen, eat schoolfish or Keen, and belch after it ate.
Somehow, the Dopefish has become a cult character in the industry to hide in your video game.
Joe Siegler of 3D Realms has compiled a site of all the Dopefish appearances and the history and all that.
Please excuse my “David Copperfield” photo within.
December 13, 2008 at 1:10 am
That is the best photo evar.
February 1, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Hey Tom,
I’m a 19 year old GameDesign-Student in Germany. We got a task, to sculpt a character: I modeled the Dopefish with Clay, here are two pictures:
http://www.computerpannen.com/putfiles/dope1.jpg
http://www.computerpannen.com/putfiles/dope2.jpg
Greetings and i would love to hear from you
February 2, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Heh, great clay models!
April 20, 2009 at 2:14 pm
That clay dopefish looks awesome!!
October 16, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Now he also made it into a really big newspaper in Germany, especially read often in Bavaria. I gave an interview about studying GameDesign, because still today its something very uncommon in Germany. I couldnt resist to put the clay model in front of me
http://www.computerpannen.com/putfiles/dope3_newspaper.png
December 6, 2009 at 5:10 pm
There is an iPhone game called Pushy and the protagonist of it looks almost exactly like the Dopefish: http://www.pushy-co.de/
Now you can sue’em a million bucks!! (I demand at least 10%)