Then there were large monster sprites and an eerie game soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails. For one there was the QUAKE engine which became the industries standard for many a year. There were a lot of innovations and novelties in this game, compared to it's predecessors. The game story was dark and sinister and took place in a huge, castle like building with different portals to start from. QUAKE actually made me by a new computer to compete with the game requirements. But for us first-person-shooter veterans it was a revelation. I recently played it on LAN and its as good as ever.ītw, if you haven't already check out QTest to see what was available to the public as an alpha for LAN play back in 96 - I can still remember walking down these halls on my Pentium60 back then.

All potential that somehow can be felt in SP explosively unravels when you enter MP and are swept away. Verbal fluff aside - Quake rocks! It's a good to great SP game but what really makes it 'tic' is the multiplayer aspect. id's design, gfx and sound team, despite low numbers and overlap, worked up some immensely impressive output that helped Quake position itself in the more surreal part of darker games. And be it by just glancing over the code or seeing Quake run one just had to emit a sigh of wonder.īut what would be the most elaborate technicality without highly competent craftsmanship being able to transfer the competence of the inner workings. None else than the 90ies 'dream team' of computer graphics, John Carmack and Michael Abrash, rolled up the sleeves and put all of their expertise, into this colossus of, now legacy, 3D game technology. While Doom had as its core technical novum(from an implementation perspective) a few assembly procedures plus mainly C code rubbing itself somewhat close to the 486s strengths, Quake made far more serious effort to designate the emerging 586 as its ultimate platform.

This NeXT iteration of awe did not only excel at the conceptual technical level but also in the way it was implemented on 'contemporary machinery' - the Pentium. In early 1996, when id software was still king of the hill, most of the PC Scene was seething with anticipation of what 'the next big thing' would be.

Only a few select offerings by gifted individuals can lastingly influence whole genres, or even create new ones, and Quake, alongside Doom, was perfectly matching multiple tough criteria in their relevant 'eon' - render-ing them timeless classics. Quake represented a paradigm shifter in multiple aspects.

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