Tom Hall
COMMANDER KEEN PWNZ L33T H4X0RZZZZZ LOL
Tom Hall is a game designer born in Wisconsin. He attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison and there received a B.S. in Computer Science. In 1987 he worked at Softdisk Inc., where he was both a programmer and the editor of a software bundle delivered monthly. Along with some of his co-workers, John Romero, John Carmack, and Adrian Carmack, he founded id Software. He served as creative director and designer there, working on games such as the Commander Keen series, Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, and Doom.
After some disputes with John Carmack about the design for Doom, he left to join Apogee/3D Realms. He was the game designer for Rise of the Triad, produced Terminal Velocity, and helped in varying degrees on Duke Nukem II and Duke Nukem 3D as well.
Next Hall co-founded Ion Storm with John Romero. But the company was less than successful, and he and John founded Monkeystone Games, a company with far less grandiose plans. He designed, and Romero programmed, Hyperspace Delivery Boy!, which was released in 2002. He and Romero were hired by Midway Games, and Monkeystone closed in January 2005. Hall also left Midway early that year and did independent game consultation work out of the Austin, TX, until in February he joined a startup company called KingsIsle Entertainment based in the same area.
Hall is also the creator of the Dopefish, a large, green, buck-toothed, belching, dimwitted fish whose thought process is restricted to "Swim, swim, hungry." The Dopefish first appeared in Commander Keen, and references to it have appeared in many other games since.