Quake II

1001 Video Games

Quake II appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Action figures

In 1998, Quake II action figures were released to stores by ReSaurus. There was only one series of figures. The series was composed of: Marine (& Barracuda Shark), Jungle Marine (& Strogg Parasite), Iron Maiden (& Strogg Technician), Tank, and a limited edition Psycho Marine.

European version

The UK Windows Version Quake II CD has the following printed on it:

This product is intended for sale outside North America only and will not function on North American operating systems.

Upon testing this seems to be untrue, it works on every North American version of Windows tested. Assumedly this was to prevent people importing the CDs from the EU and selling them in the US.

German index

On December 20, 1997, the PC version of Quake II was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. The Nintendo 64 version followed August 31, 1999.

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.

Language

This is the second time id Software has invented an alien language for use in their games (the first was in Commander Keen). Like Keen's Simplified Galactian Alphabet, the Strogg language in Quake II is a simple letter-by-letter cipher. Although no-one has ever made a Strogg font pack, you can decipher signs and messages in the game using the Strogg translator at id's Quake 4 site.

Release

The game was rushed to be ready for the very lucrative Christmas 1997. It shipped with a lot of bugs, missing features (no multiplayer maps) and multiplayer was almost unplayable on the net at first, but id fixed all these issues with numerous patches.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack, composed by Sonic Mayhem, features a total of ten tracks in CD-Audio quality. If you listen to the CD be sure to skip the first track, which is the data information.

The rest of the tracks are:

1. Operation Overlord

2. Rage

3. Kill Ratio

4. March of the Stroggs

5. The Underworld

6. Quad Machine

7. Big Gun

8. Descent Into Cerberon

9. Climb

10. Showdown

Source code release

On 22 December 2001, the full source code was released. It can be downloaded from the ID software website.

Zeebo 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 Rolimã and Zeebo Extreme Jetboard as free downloads.

Awards

• Computer Gaming World
  • March 1998 (Issue #164) – Action Game of the Year
• GameSpy
  • 2001 – #47 Top Game of All Time
• Interactive Achievement Awards (Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences)
  • 1998 – Computer Action Game of the Year – Won
• PC Gamer
  • April 2000 - #8 overall in the "All-Time Top 50 Games" poll

Information also contributed by Apogee IV, chirinea, Maw, Mike Quigley, PCGamer77, Sciere, Xoleras and Zovni