The first time I ever laid eyes on id Software’s Quake was in the pages of a magazine. Not a gaming magazine—I was 10 years old, my parents weren’t going to buy me any—no this was a “family” magazine that loads of people in my country buy, and there, laid out in an article, were the most amazing screenshots I’d ever seen.
The article itself was about how video games were getting too realistic and violent, but all I could look at were those impossible graphics, and that sick, rusty and blood-soaked battleaxe. It would be a few more years before I would actually get to play Quake (our little 286 had no chance), but I never forgot that first impression of it.
From Wolf3D, to DOOM, to Quake
Of course, that wasn’t even nearly my first encounter with id Software games. No, I was already deeply invested in Commander Keen, and when I got to go to my dad’s job with him, he’d sometimes let me play the shareware version of Wolfenstein 3D on his office PC while he did the rounds on the shop floor he managed. I vividly remember telling some kids at school the game “looked just like real life”, and could you blame me? Just look at it.
All kidding aside, I’d never seen a video game from a first-person perspective before. I’d never felt so immersed, or such intensity while playing a game. It wasn’t long after that, once we’d upgraded to a 486 PC, that I got to play DOOM, and this took the basic technology of the (retroactively named) Id Tech 0 engine, and went to town with id Tech 1—the DOOM engine.
The leap between Wolf3D and DOOM is enormous. The levels could seemingly be any shape, you could walk up and down stairs, there was active lighting, and so much more. The atmosphere of DOOM is still one of the best things about it to this day. Wolf3D felt pretty sterile, and also had strong arcade roots in its gameplay, while DOOM laid the template for PC gaming, taking a clean break from the arcade—no high scores or pointless loot to collect!
It’s hard to believe these games were released only about a year and a half apart. History rightly sees Wolf3D as the grandfather of modern FPS games, and DOOM as the title that made the FPS genre the juggernaut that it is today, launching an endless stream of “DOOM clones”.
However, both of these games were literally two-dimensional. Even though you had the illusion of moving through a 3D space, it’s all smoke and mirrors. No actual 3D spatial mapping was happening. Sometimes these games are referred to as “2.5D” and if you play them you’ll understand why. Even in DOOM, though it seems like it’s possible, you can’t actually have rooms on top of each other. The map is flat. The characters are 2D cardboard cutouts called “sprites”. Nothing has depth or volume at all.
That’s the biggest leap that Quake brought to the table—true 3D polygonal gameplay. This was no mere “clone” of DOOM.
A Game Built on Cutting-Edge Tech
The Quake Engine (id Tech 2) was mind-blowing at the time. With Wolf3D and DOOM, the player character is essentially a floating camera locked to a flat plane. You can’t look up or down, and there’s no concept of vertical aiming—just sprite trickery. Not so for Quake. You can aim in any direction, you can jump, and there’s a rudimentary physics system. The monsters are proper 3D models. Some weapons (like the nail guns) fire 3D ammo!
Of course, anyone can go back today and play these games back-to-back to appreciate the difference, but you can never replicate the experience of playing Quake for the first time having never experienced a true 3D game. It’s just something players take for granted these days.
The Shot Heard Around the LAN
Advanced, true 3D rendering was the most razzle-dazzle feature of Quake, but perhaps even more important was its role it played in making LAN gaming popular. Sure, you could LAN in DOOM, and it was OK, but Quake’s deathmatch gameplay is addictive like nothing else that came before.
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This was the birth of the eSports scene. In 1997 id Software programming Wizard John Carmack put up one of his Ferraris as a prize in one of the first national video game tournaments. The tournament (and the car) was won by Dennis “Thresh” Fong, who is most likely the first ever professional gamer—at least according to the Guinness World Records people.
My friends and I even had our own little local Quake “clan” with red and gold colors, though for the life of me I can’t remember what we called ourselves. It was probably awesome, whatever it was.
Quake was also influential in establishing the speedrunning scene, especially since you could record your gameplay, which led to movements such as Quake done Quick. Honestly, so much of modern gaming culture can be traced right back to this game.
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The Mod Scene That Redefined What a Game Could Be
While amazing graphics and gameplay will get you far, and the multiplayer component was a potent way to keep people playing, what really made Quake immortal are game mods. Team Fortress famously began life as a Quake mod. Thanks to how flexible id Tech 2 is, you can create entire new genres of game within Quake, such as Quake Chess or even a rally racing game. Recently, Doom (2016) has been demade in the id Tech 2 engine (modified as Dark Places) in the form of Slayer’s Testaments.
Both Quake and Quake II use the same id Tech 2 engine, but it received several upgrades for Quake II, especially in the lighting department. Several notable games would end up using a licensed version of id Tech 2, including SiN, Anachronox, Daikatana, Kingpin: Life of Crime, and Soldier of Fortune. GoldSrc (Gold Source), the engine for the original Half-Life, is in fact a heavily-modified Quake engine.
Of course, there were plenty of mods for Wolf3D (I played the Barney the Dinosaur one a lot) and DOOM mods, but Quake really invited total conversions to a greater degree than I’d personally seen before. The gaming magazines I read would often put these mods on the cover discs, and it felt like there were new ones being showcased every other month.
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Why Quake Still Matters—29 Years Later
There’s no way you can overstate how much modern first-person shooters owe to Quake. It’s the design and technical bedrock that 3D shooters are all based on in some way. Many of the clever solutions that John Carmack came up with to make Quake possible on the truly weak hardware of the day are still used in modern engines such as Unreal Engine 5.
“Boomer shooters” as they’re known these days, are fundamentally built on Quake’s game design and that design is having a resurgence. New boomer shooters are coming out again, and it’s not just the gameplay of Quake that serves as inspiration.
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Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is a strong tribute to Quake, and Graven is a spiritual successor to Hexen II. Which is another title based on id Tech 2. Perhaps most importantly, Quake has not been surpassed by any modern shooter when it comes to what it set out to do. The game is just as sharp, fun, and challenging to play today as it was the day it came out.
The only thing that’s really changed with the modern remaster and the many source ports out there are better graphics, and some small quality of life changes. The core of Quake is timeless, and any gamer, young or old, can pick up the game right now and be pulled into its dark Lovecraftian world and addictive gameplay. So, if you’ve never played the original Quake, pick it up on PC, console, or literally play it in your web browser right now—do it.
I may no longer be that kid staring wide-eyed at a magazine spread, but every time I hear that iconic shotgun or step into a shadowy hallway in Quake, I remember exactly why it blew my mind back then—and still does.
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