Just like the rest of the world, I’ve been playing the Quake Re-release on my PC and Nintendo Switch for the last three weeks. Just like the rest of the internet, I LOVED the original Quake Trilogy. If I’m being honest, I think Quake II was probably the weakest in the series, only because other games were doing the multiplayer thing better by then. I was already playing Jedi Knight, Dark Forces II and its sublime expansion pack Mysteries of the Sith by then. Frankly, they were a much more well rounded multiplayer experiences. But that being said, the Quake Trilogy has a special place in my heart. For those of you who have read “The Amaranth Chronicles: Deviant Rising” you may remember Aurelius teaching Lithia how to shoot a gun at a series of little holographic ducks at a booth named “Quak 3 Arena”.

I was just completing 5th grade when Quake was originally released on June 22, 1996. I remember the weekend it came out my dad and I were window shopping at the Aztec themed Fry’s Electronics in San Jose California.

We normally went to the Fry’s in Sunnyvale but for some reason, that afternoon we went to this one…

We never had money to buy anything but we ended up at a Fry’s Electronics nearly every weekend. We always browsed the shelves and fantasized about what we would buy if we won the lottery. Did I mention how poor my family was? That’s what kind of made this day special, sorta…

There was this big Quake logo and display on one of the end caps of my favorite isle, the PC game isle. Most PC games at that time were coming in big cardboard boxes but for some reason, Quake was just in a shrink-wrapped jewel case like any music CD. I remember standing underneath that giant letter Q like it was a religious effigy in this Aztec Temple. My dad was always a techie and had not only read about the game in some journal or magazine but had probably seen it being played somewhere. At the moment I was standing under that logo, he knew more about it than I did. I just new it was the next game changer, the next thing that was going to revolutionize how games were created. Anyone who didn’t live through the 90’s may not be able to appreciate how every six months technology was leaping forward and a whole new slew of video games were coming with it. I knew better than to touch anything on those shelves, but that day I couldn’t help myself. I reached out and picked up one of the jewel cases. Examining it, I flipped it over to look at the screenshots on the back and was astonished. The game looked real, or more real than any other video game I had ever seen.

“Its a shooter, like Wolfenstein and Doom.” my dad said in reverence, “Its the new shooter made by the same people.”

I knew better than to ask if we could buy it. Not just because we were perpetually broke, but because my mother was not a fan of me owning violent video games. Wolfenstein and Doom had fallen through the cracks, which in retrospect, were pretty big cracks if the two most violent video games of the time had found there way onto the family computer without her noticing. But it was quite the juxtaposition holding the CD with the rune-like Q logo on it inside of a building made to look like an ancient place of worship.

“You wanna get it?” he said.

I remember a shiver ran down my spine, doubting that I had heard what he had just said.

“Really?” I asked almost expecting him to add, “Sure, get a job.” but to my shock, he was dead serious. The times in my life my dad was this… spontaneous… I can count on one hand. This right here, in this commercially branded religious temple holding the black, stone-like, Quake rune in my hand was the first.

I don’t remember much discussion afterwards, but I remember clutching that jewel case like a contestant on Legends of The Hidden Temple who was going to have to fight off a couple temple guards. I remember my heart pounding as we paid for it and hopped in the car.

“I heard it has online multiplayer.” he said as we pulled out of the parking lot.

I had never played a video game with other players over the internet before so that comment made my imagination run wild. The idea of sitting at the family computer and battling someone from the other side of the planet was something right out of Star Trek and seemed as futuristic as flying cars. At that time, we were the only ones on the block that hard internet access from home. Everyone else used it at the city library, but we had our own 28.8k modem. This allowed me to browse the web and BBS boards for shareware (free demo’s) to my hearts content. I had never owned a full PC game before. They were “too expensive” and frankly, I was quite content with the Demo’s I use to download, often times not even realizing it was only a portion of the entire game. But now, I was holding my very first retail PC game in my hands.

That’s when I saw it, a sticker on the back of the jewel case that made my heart sink to a very dark place. “Pentium 75Mhz or better required”. Quake wasn’t going to run on our lowly 486. I read it out loud in disbelief. Had we been so caught in the moment that we didn’t see the minimum system requirements. My dad laughed and said “Oh no.” before turning the car around.

I remember standing there feeling humilated and like “nothing ever went my way” as we returned it. The customer service guy seemed to even question us as he tore the plastic off the jewel case and opened it, “We’ve had people return it with PlayStation CDs in it.” he said, either because it was true or because he was trying to save face because he couldn’t believe anyone would make such a silly mistake.

The ride home that afternoon was quite. Like a kid does, I remember wondering why good things never happened to me. Later that same year dad did finally build a Pentium capable of running Quake but by then we couldn’t afford it. Luckily I was able to download the Shareware demo but I never owned the full version of Quake until it became available on Steam sometime in the mid 2000’s.

Quake swag from over the years

I’ve got a Quake 3 pillow around here somewhere…

Reign

A Quake map by Alexander Barnes

Sad stories aside, I’ve been a hobbyist “mapper” for years. This is my first released Quake 1 map entitled “Reign”. It took me about two weeks to design and test but I am happy to say it is fully compatible the recent rerelease of Quake on PC and has full bot support. In order to play it, you’ll need a few things: