Original Quake Download

[Adriana Gowen]

Quakeis a first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive. The first game in the Quake series,[11] it was originally released for MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, and Linux in 1996, followed by Mac OS and Sega Saturn in 1997 and Nintendo 64 in 1998.

The game's plot is centered around teleportation experiments, dubbed slipgates, which have resulted in an unforeseen invasion of Earth by a hostile force codenamed Quake, which commands a vast army of monsters. The player takes the role of a soldier (later dubbed Ranger), whose mission is to travel through the slipgates in order to find and destroy the source of the invasion. The game is split between futuristic military bases and medieval, gothic environments, featuring both science fiction and fantasy weaponry and enemies as the player battles possessed soldiers and demonic beasts such as ogres or armor-clad knights. Quake heavily takes inspiration from gothic fiction and in particular the works of H. P. Lovecraft. The game went through many revisions during development, and had originally been inspired by a Dungeons & Dragons campaign held among id Software staff.[12]

The successor to id Software's Doom series, Quake built upon the technology and gameplay of its predecessor.[13] Unlike the Doom engine before it, the Quake engine offered full real-time 3D rendering and had early support for 3D acceleration through OpenGL. After Doom helped popularize multiplayer deathmatches, Quake added various multiplayer options. Online multiplayer became increasingly common, with the QuakeWorld update and software such as QuakeSpy making the process of finding and playing against others on the Internet easier and more reliable. Quake featured music composed by Trent Reznor and his band Nine Inch Nails.[10]

Quake is often cited as one of the best video games ever made.[14][15][16] Despite its critical acclaim, Quake's development was controversial in the history of id Software. Due to creative differences and a lack of leadership, the majority of the team left the company after the game's release, including co-founder John Romero.[17] An "enhanced" version of Quake was developed by Nightdive Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks and was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One consoles in August 2021, including the original game's first two expansions and two episodes developed by MachineGames. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions were released in October 2021.[8]

In Quake's single-player mode, players explore levels, facing monsters and finding secret areas before reaching an exit. Switches or keys open doors, and reaching the exit takes the player to the next level. Before accessing an episode, there is a set of three pathways with easy, medium, and hard skill levels. The fourth skill level, "Nightmare", was described by the game manual to be "so bad that the entry is hidden, so people won't wander in by accident".[18]

Quake's single-player campaign is organized into four individual episodes with seven to eight levels in each (including one secret level per episode, one of which is a "low gravity" level that challenges the player's abilities in a different way). If the player's character dies, they must restart at the beginning of that level. The game may be saved at any time in the PC versions and between levels in the console versions. Upon completing an episode, the player is returned to the hub "START" level, where another episode can be chosen. Each episode starts the player from scratch, without any previously collected items. Episode one (which formed the shareware or downloadable demo version of Quake) has the most traditional layout with a boss in the last level. The ultimate objective at the end of each episode is to recover a magic rune. After all of the runes are collected, the floor of the hub level opens up to reveal an entrance to the "END" level which contains a final puzzle.

In multiplayer mode, players on several computers connect to a server (which may be a dedicated machine or on one of the player's computers), where they can either play the single-player campaign together in co-op (cooperative) mode, or play against each other in multiplayer. When players die in multiplayer mode, they can immediately respawn, but will lose any items that were collected. Similarly, items that have been picked up previously respawn after some time, and may be picked up again. The most popular multiplayer modes are all forms of deathmatch. Deathmatch modes typically consist of either free-for-all (no organization or teams involved), one-on-one duels, or organized teamplay with two or more players per team (or clan). Players frequently implement mods during teamplay. Monsters are not normally present in teamplay, as they get in the way and reveal the positions of the players.

The gameplay in Quake was considered unique for its time because of the different ways the player can maneuver through the game.[19] Bunny hopping or strafe jumping allow faster movement, while rocket jumping enables the player to reach otherwise-inaccessible areas at the cost of some self-damage. The player can start and stop moving suddenly, jump unnaturally high, and change direction while moving through the air. Many of these non-realistic behaviors contribute to Quake's appeal. Multiplayer Quake was one of the first games singled out as a form of electronic sport.[20] A notable participant was Dennis Fong, who won John Carmack's Ferrari 328 at the Microsoft-sponsored Red Annihilation tournament in 1997.[21]

In the single-player game, the player takes the role of the protagonist, unnamed in Quake but referred to as Ranger in later games (voiced by Trent Reznor),[22] who is sent into a portal in order to stop an enemy code-named "Quake". The government had been experimenting with teleportation technology and developed a working prototype called a "Slipgate"; the mysterious Quake compromised the Slipgate by connecting it with its own teleportation system, using it to send death squads to the "Human" dimension in order to test the martial capabilities of humanity.

The sole surviving protagonist in "Operation Counterstrike" is Ranger, who must advance, starting each of the four episodes from an overrun human military base, before fighting his way into other dimensions, reaching them via the Slipgate or their otherworld equivalent. After passing through the Slipgate, Ranger's main objective is to collect four magic runes from four dimensions of Quake; these are the key to stopping the enemy and ending the invasion of Earth.

The single-player campaign consists of 30 separate levels, or "maps", divided into four episodes (with a total of 26 regular maps and four secret ones), as well as a hub level to select a difficulty setting and episode, and the game's final boss level. Each episode represents individual dimensions that the player can access through the Slipgate or magical portals (in the case of the latter three episodes) that are discovered over the course of the game. The various realms consist of a number of gothic, medieval, and lava-filled caves and dungeons, with a recurring theme of hellish and satanic imagery reminiscent of Doom (such as pentagrams and images of demons on the walls). The game's setting is inspired by dark fantasy influences, including H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.[23] Dimensional Shamblers appear as enemies, the "Spawn" enemies are called "Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua" in the manual, the boss of the first episode is named Chthon, the main villain is named Shub-Niggurath and is explicitly stated to be an Old One, and the four episodes all have Lovecraftian names.[23]

In the early 1990s, the staff at id Software had a private Dungeons & Dragons game, which would go on to inspire a number of elements in their titles over the following years. With John Carmack as DM, the campaign featured a group of adventures named the Silver Shadow Band. The group were named for the silver dragon on which they flew, and each represented one of the core stats of the game. Among them was a powerful character named Quake, representing strength, who fought with a magic hammer capable of destroying buildings. Quake was accompanied by a floating magic artefact named the Hellgate Cube which attacked his foes with lightning bolts.[24] Romero described fighting alongside Quake as the most fun they had playing D&D. The Silver Shadow Band did "contract work for Justice, an even more powerful group". The original campaign concluded in early 1992, after Romero's character made a deal with a demon, exchanging a book called the Demonomicron for a magic sword called the Daikatana, which resulted in a demonic invasion that wiped out the Material Plane.[25]

A preview included with id Software's first release, 1990's Commander Keen, advertised a game entitled The Fight for Justice as a follow-up to the Commander Keen trilogy. It would feature a character named Quake, "the strongest, most dangerous person on the continent", armed with thunderbolts and a "Ring of Regeneration". Conceived as a VGA full-color side-scrolling role-playing video game, The Fight for Justice was never released. The team briefly explored making the project in 1991 but abandoned the idea as the technology for it simply didn't exist at the time. The project was only in development for about two weeks.[24]

The team entered into an R&D phase while Carmack was working on the engine. By 1995, the outline for the game included a medieval setting, hand to hand combat, thrown weapons, an area of effect attack with the hammer, and feeding souls to the Hellgate Cube.[24] Some early information on Quake was released publicly, focusing on a Thor-like character who wields a giant hammer.[27][28][29] A close up of Quake holding his hammer was on the cover of PC Gamer for the October 1995 issue, and screenshots showed medieval environments and a dragon.[12] Romero revealed in 2023 that the dragon model was never actually implemented, and had simply been placed in the sky for the screenshot. The plan was for the game to have more role-playing-style elements.[30] An Aztec style texture set was developed for the project, but the set was not used due to artistic opposition from American McGee, who preferred a more heavy metal themed look for his levels. This second texture set was used for the Vaults of Zin.[31]

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