Let mere mortals cry out in pain and despair: Shub-Niggurath is celebrating, and as a gift demands blood. It's true that we never run out of words to remember the DOOM saga, but no one can deny that it had an extraordinary heir in Quake. Besides giving rise to a gigantic community of players and modders, Quake was truly revolutionary thanks to its technological advances, doing things that until then seemed impossible on a computer.
A First Impression
The first time I saw Quake in action was on a computer that didn't have speakers connected. The player had the grenade launcher, and after seeing a grenade bounce off the wall and the floor (truly madness in 1996, at least for me), I imitated the "clang, clang" sound of the bounce. "I swear it makes that sound," he told me. Unfortunately, fate (or rather, hardware requirements) caused me to sink my claws into Quake much later, but I'll never forget that first impression. DOOM 2 had come out less than two years before, and for many players a third edition would have been more than enough, but we crossed paths with Quake, and everything changed. Absolutely everything changed.
More Than Raising the Bar
Why do I say this? Because more than raising the bar, it directly placed it into orbit. Quake offers an excellent single-player campaign, but it also established basic rules in multiplayer, served as fertile ground for the speedrun concept (which was already known and practiced with DOOM), and its graphics engine became raw material for dozens of modifications used in extraordinary games on their own merit. An example? Quake had its evolution to GLQuake and QuakeWorld, and from that code was created none other than GoldSrc, the engine of the first Half-Life, all its expansions, and Counter-Strike, which, by the way, started as a mod. So... how much do we owe Quake?
Twenty Years Later
The answer is "much more than it appears". Last Wednesday, Quake turned 20. It drove us crazy with its secret sectors, relentless enemies, and the need to save every last cent to upgrade our PCs, because in June 1996, Quake demanded a nuclear reactor. Today, even a fuel pump can run it, and thanks to the work done with ports (John Romero himself recommends QUAKESPASM) it's very easy to run on modern systems. Both Good Old Games and Steam offer it in their stores (and GOG gives away the first two Elder Scrolls with its purchase). We have to celebrate its birthday. What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for...?
