Quake

aka: Quake 64, Quake Mobile, Quake: The Doomed Dimension
Moby ID: 374
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

An enemy with the codename ''Quake'', which is believed to come from another dimension, is using teleporter gates to invade Earth. The player takes the role of a nameless soldier who arrives at his base only to find out Quake has overrun it and killed everyone. Somewhere in the base, there must be a teleporter to Quake's realm. The mission is clear: take the fight to the enemy, overcome countless hordes of monsters, and exact revenge.

id Software's follow-up to Doom and Doom II, Quake is a first-person shooter. Its main technological innovation is the use of a true 3D engine - the levels themselves, as well as the enemies, are polygonal. This not only allows for more natural level-designs and character animations, but also for more realistic lighting and the inclusion of simulated physics that have an effect on gameplay: grenades can bounce off walls and around corners, for example.

In single-player mode, gameplay consists mainly of proceeding through the levels (spread over four distinct episodes) in search of an exit, killing everything that moves. Interaction with the game world is reduced to a minimum: since there is no use key, buttons are pressed by running into or shooting at them. As in id's earlier games, many secrets are waiting to be discovered, including a few hidden levels.

Unlike Doom's rather straightforward design that couples futuristic environments with demonic imagery, the theme of Quake's levels, enemies, and weapons is not so easily pinpointed. While each episode begins in a futuristic military base (with a technological 'slipgate' as the level exit), later levels take place in environments inspired by medieval fantasy and gothic horror (castles, dungeons, and caverns) and the player passes through magical portals to advance. In a departure from Doom's colorful environments, all Quake levels are dominated by earth colors.

The enemies conform to the mishmash of designs: there are human opponents armed with shotguns and energy weapons in the early levels, while the later levels include medieval knights, ghosts, zombies, ogres (armed with grenade launchers and chainsaws), and some more unearthly beasts. The player's weapons, while relatively modern, all have a low-tech feel. Besides a (bloodstained) axe, there are shotguns, nailguns, rocket and grenade launchers, and the Thunderbolt, which discharges electrical energy.

Quake was one of the first games playable natively over the Internet in addition to LANs. The single-player levels can be played cooperatively, but the game is most famous for its deathmatch mode. One-on-one duels, team play, and free-for-all competition are possible. The emphasis is on fast reaction and skillful maneuvering through the levels. All of the single-player maps can be used as arenas, but the game also comes with six maps specially designed for deathmatch.

Spellings

  • 雷神之锤 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

27 People (15 developers, 12 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 87% (based on 61 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 464 ratings with 19 reviews)

All the other reviews are rubbish

The Good
Where Doom was in fact a technological step backwards (Ultima Underworld had a far superior engine a year previously) Quake was in every sense state of the art. One of the first truly 3D games engines, it was certainly by far and away the best looking thing at the time. A combination of great level design, fantastic music and Lovecraft-esque setting created the scariest atmosphere I'd met in a computer game. The out-of-the-box internet gameplay and free ability to create mods of the basic engine were better executed than had ever been before, perhaps due to id software has its roots in the shareware movement. The fact they have released the source code since is a nice nod to the independent game development community. But above all? The sheer playability.

The Bad
The downsides? Having to put up with people whining about the same old stuff when you say you like Quake. (It's too brown... no story... too much gore... don't like shooting games... Doom is better...) SHUT UP. The only real downside? It was such a success we now have to put up with endless inferior imitations.

The Bottom Line
It's easy in a genre that has advanced so fast to look back on the older titles with vague disgust rather than the admiration they deserve. Quake was a revolutionary game, and still is a fantastically fun one.

DOS · by rar (2) · 2004

Best deathmatch, hands down

The Good
This game is a legend, and anyone that even remotely loves online deathmatch, CTF, or other FPS type games should know what I'm talking about.

First of all, the graphics for the time period are simply amazing. I can remember running this game on a 4 meg Diamond Monster 3d card and it was blazing fast and quite simply beautiful. The sound and music are top notch as well, and Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails fame) takes credit for that.

Next, the level design is fantastic. Playing deathmatch and arena or other mods reveals just how well thought out the levels are. American McGee among others are responsible for very well planned environments. You can tell that this game wasn't just thrown together, and one can even imagine Id's offices a big mess with drawings and print outs in regards to level design posted all over the walls.

Furthermore, the game is fully customizable. Quake is either the first, or one of the first games to feature the use of the console in game (something that is now standard on all FPS games). With a little instruction one could enter commands into the console to alter the settings of the game in real time. There was so much versatility and control given to the user, that you could even manipulate the way your online connection functions (like eliminating delta from the tcp/ip function with commands like cl_nodelta 1), what information is given to the player, which models are drawn on the screen and which aren't, the list is exhaustive and goes on and on. The level of customization afforded to the end user was so powerful that Quake could run on just about any machine, and not only that but look and play entirely different on different PC's.

The multiplayer is unbelievably fast. I used to ping 16 with an ISDN connection, and had a friend on 56k that could ping 90. Yes, with some in game tweaking ultra low pings were possible. Furthermore, you could be in a big deathmatch, rockets flying all over the place and 6 or 7 people on your screen with the settings maxed out, and never have your ping move or your framerate drop, all while playing on a p133 with 64mb RAM and a 4meg video card. Phenomenal!

The deathmatch modes are the real meat an potatoes here. I've yet to find any DM type FPS games that are as fast or as hardcore as this game. There isn't much in the way of fancy items or powerups save for some armor, extra health, and occasional quad damage or invulnerability. This game requires raw skill, precision aiming, and knowledge of map layouts all of which take months or even years to perfect.

There are lots of user created maps and add-ons. Clan Arena and Rocket Arena, along with QuakeWorld were my favorite mods, but they also had Team Fortress and other ambitious mods. Now that the game is open source, the sky is the limit.

The Bad
The single player game is weak and mostly worthless. I had first played in single player mode and this made me quit the game for a couple of months until I started hearing from everyone about how untouchable the multiplayer was.

Learning console commands might be discouraging to some, but then again knowledge of their function is not a requirement for play. On the other hand, to have any chance of success during serious competition a working knowledge of the commands is a must, and a .cfg file must be tested and tweaked ad naseum in order to achieve one's full potential. This can be good or bad depending on your disposition.

Some complained that the colors were drab and got old. Lots of shades of brown and gray throughout the levels.

The Bottom Line
Quake is the single best DM game hands down, even today. Even though it was released in 1996, people are still playing it regularly, although the online population is only a fraction of the size it used to be. I played the game from 1996 to 2004 when I finally retired, and there were still big clans, ladders, competitions, and public and private servers available. The speed of the game, multiplayer code, meat and potatoes deathmatch, and customizing options have made this game one I'll never forget.

DOS · by D Michael (222) · 2007

I'm Quaking In My Boots...

The Good
The 90’s were the golden age of FPS. The earlier days of the decade gave us Doom, and Wolfenstein. Midway through the decade, Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, and Hexen, were our dark masters. However, 1996, ID Software would release a game that would usher in a new era of FPS’. That game was Quake.

In Quake, you are a soldier working for a team of scientists that are researching dimensional portals, when they accidentally stumble on the haunted realms of Quake. Now the horrific dimensions are going to invade the Earth Realm. It is up to you to stop them. The plot is pretty light, there are no cut scenes, or any thing like that. But the story is rather dark, and supposedly inspired by H. P. Lovecraft.

There are 4 terror filed realms of Quake. Each with multiple levels. In the levels you fight monsters collect keys, find secrets, and eventually find the rune of the realm you are in. There is an array of weapons at your disposal. From an Axe, to Shotguns, and my all time favorite, the Nail Gun.

Monsters seemingly inspired by the nightmares of madmen, also fill levels. Each has a particular weakness, and best weapon to take down. Finding the weakness is another story. Boss fights are rare, but always impressive.

For the time the graphics of Quake were amazing. It was the first true 3D FPS. Levels are dark, and foreboding, and the monsters are truly scary. Nice lighting effects abound as well. If you can get Quake to run with even an older 3D card it will look much better almost like a new game!

The sound really shines in Quake. Both the music and sound effects were done by Nine Inch Nails. The music itself is more ambient, than in traditional FPS’. The sound effects are creepy, to say the least. Each monster has a distinct sound, so you will come to dread what is around the next corner. Weapon sounds are very good as well. Try playing the game with surround sound. Or in the dark with headphones on. You’ll swear that you can hear things with the headphones that you could not hear with out them.

The Bad
Quake is not an easy game. So not for those not looking for a challenge. But otherwise not a bad thing.

The game of course is dated, it’s been 10 years after all.

Getting Quake to run on newer machines is a challenge.

The Bottom Line
This is one of the best FPS and a landmark, not only in it’s genre but for games in general. If you have the means play it. Or if it has been awhile play it again.

DOS · by MasterMegid (723) · 2006

[ View all 19 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Paul Steed credit leilei (343) Aug 13, 2012
What music? null-geodesic (106) Jun 12, 2008

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The PC version of Quake appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Scrapped versions

The Game Boy Advance version of Quake was in development by AGB Games. There were also plans for port to Sony PlayStation by Lobotomy Software, which was able to work, under some circumstances, in 60 FPS. First one was cancelled for unknown reasons, while second cancellation was caused by fact, that developer failed to find a publisher.

3D cards support

The original game had software rendering mode only. You could download glquake to use your 3d accelerated card. A special version was made for the intergraph rendition cards called vquake.

Anaconda level

Bizarre product tie-ins: for the release of the movie Anaconda, Sony pictures released through their website an add-on level for Quake titled Temple of the Mist were you made your way trough an ancient temple searching for the altar that holds the key to escape. Obviously, before escaping you have to go mano a mano with the Anaconda itself...weird uh?

Development

The original Quake was supposed to have a medieval environment, but a few months before its release, most of the medieval-role playing aspects of the game were removed (i.e. one of the weapons was going to be a sword and there was a dragon to fight with) and the result was a game with guns but such enemies like the fiend or the death knight (these were included in the original project). Many original design elements were scrapped -- the kernel idea behind Quake was this massive Thor-like warhammer that you could slam down on the ground to make shockwaves ripple through the game world. This "ultimate weapon" idea followed John Romero to his game Daikatana.

The original concept was inspired by a character named Quake in id's long D&D campaign (which actually ended with demons destroying the universe due to John Romero's greed), DM'd by John Carmack. Because of the switch to sci-fi, Romero was angry enough to leave id after Quake, even though Carmack fired him first. He later used another inspiration from the D&D campaign to make Daikatana.

Deathmatch

Kornelia, a famous female Quake player, won the "TEN GibFest Contest" at the computer game developers conference at Santa Clara. As a result, she was afforded the opportunity to play John Romero in a 1v1 deathmatch. She beat him 22 to 1 and also took home a P200 MMX system.

Dopefish

Quake is yet another of id Software's games that contains the infamous Dopefish. The level you can find the Dopefish on is E2M3, The Well of Wishes, in a secret location that you'd probably need a walkthrough to get to. Incidentally, "The Well of Wishes" is the same title as a Commander Keen 4: Secret of the Oracle level where the Dopefish first appears.

Engine

The engine that iD Software started to make Quake with was called Six Degrees of Freedom

German index

On August 31, 1996, Quake was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. For more information about what this means and to see a list of games sharing the same fate, take a look here: BPjS/BPjM indexed games.

IFQuake

Taking John Romero's work on the Apple ][ bootloader for Infocom's Zork Zero as a point of departure, in 2004 Jason Bergman released IFQuake -- the difficulty-selection stage and first level of the shareware version of Quake implemented as a text adventure game, downloadable at http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/ifquake.zip

Innovations

Almost incidentally, Quake introduced the now-standard concept of a FPS 'console', and popularised 'mouselook' as *the* absolute standard control interface. Although the specifications required a Pentium, Quake ran acceptably well on a 486 DX4/100 and, at a push, the faster 486es. Along with Magic Carpet it was however the game that most established the Pentium as a must-have processor. It was also the first game which offered the opportunity for both Amiga and PC gamers to play online together.

Machinima

Machinima, an animated film using the 3D environment of a game, started with the Quake engine. Doom already had a recording feature, but it wasn't until Quake when people added narrative and called it "movies" that the genre was born. The first known machinima is Diary of a Camper, by a group of players called The Rangers, released on October 26, 1996.

Qtest1

Quake was preceded by Qtest1, a tech demo which was released in February 1996. It consisted of three small, monster-free levels which illustrated the game's engine. Of particular note was Test3, which became the basis for the second level of Quake's first episode (of the other levels, Test2 seemed to be a very, very early incarnation of 'Ziggurat Vertigo', the infamous low-gravity secret level). The engine was almost fully complete, although wall-mounted torches were still sprite-based.

Although the test had no game - rather like the original Doom 'alpha releases' - multiplayer support was, fortunately, included. The infamous 'rocket jump' was discovered quite quickly, as Qtest included both rocket and grenade launchers.

"Chris ([email protected])" eventually discovered that monsters were included in the game's source code, and a patch released in June 1996 allowed players to experience early versions of Quake's beasties.

References

All of the sounds and music for Quake were produced by Trent Reznor, the man behind the industrial/alternative group Nine Inch Nails. The ammo boxes for the nailgun ("nails") have the band's logo (NIN) on the side.

References to the game

One of the songs on Karl Sander's album Saurian Meditation, "Elder God Shrine", was named after the Quake level E4M3 which has the same name.

Saturn version

The Saturn version of Quakeis the only version with coloured lighting, something Lobotomy Software added to the saturn version

Source code release

In 1999, id Software made the complete source code for Quake freely available to the public. You can download it here.

Speedruns

Quake inspired the art of speedruns: trying to beat a game as fast as possible. The initial release was Quake Done Quick, completed in 19:49 and released on 1997. As of 2012, players still work on breaking the latest records.

Zeeboo version

On June 15, 2010, both Quake and Quake II were removed from Zeebo's wireless network, the Brazilian Zeebonet. Both games were offered for 10 Z-credits and each Brazilian Zeebo came with 35 Z-credits, so the games were sold virtually for free. They were replaced for Zeebo Extreme RolimĂŁ and Zeebo Extreme Jetboard as free downloads.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #36 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – The Best Way To Die In Computer Gaming (being telefragged)
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) –Worst Back Story of All Time
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #5 Least Rewarding Ending of All Time
    • May 1997 (Issue #154) – Action Game of the Year
    • May 1997 (Issue #154) – Action Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
    • May 1997 (Issue #154) – Special Award for Technological Achievement (for its engine)
    • April 1999 (Issue #177) - Introduced into the Hall of Fame
    • March 2001 (Issue #200) - #8 Best Game of All Time
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #5 Top Game of All Time
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #7 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • PC Gamer
    • April 2000 - #14 in the "All-Time Top 50 Games" poll
    • April 2005 - #26 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list
  • Power Play
  • Ĺšwiat Gier Komputerowych
    • February 1997 (Issue #50) – readers' award Hitek'96 for the best foreign game of 1996

Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Ashley Pomerov, chirinea, Darksaviour69, D Michael, Erkan O; keth, Maw, n-n, PCGamer77, Pseudo_Intellectual; Sciere, Scott Monster, Xoleras, Zack Green and Zovni

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  • Tenebrae
    Tenebrae is a modification of the quake source that adds stencil shadows and per pixel lights to quake. Stencil shadows allow for realistic shadow effects on every object in the game world. Per pixel lighting allows you to have fine surface details correctly lit. These are essentially the same algorithms as used by the new Doom game.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by robotriot.

Zeebo added by chirinea. Nintendo 64 added by Kartanym. Windows Mobile, Acorn 32-bit, Amiga added by Kabushi. Windows added by The cranky hermit. Macintosh added by Ace of Sevens. SEGA Saturn added by quizzley7.

Additional contributors: JubalHarshaw, Andrew Hartnett, Ledmeister, Roedie, Unicorn Lynx, Atomic Punch!, erc, Kabushi, Patrick Bregger, Titan10, Karsa Orlong, MrFlibble, FatherJack, R3dn3ck3r.

Game added November 3, 1999. Last modified March 6, 2024.