20 Years of Quake: How a First Person Shooter Revolutionized the Whole Genre

Of the millions of video games released since the 1950s, there is just a handful that was revolutionary in one way or another. Like Tennis for Two, which was the first video game ever released. Or Pong, which was the first arcade success. Or even Doom, that has introduced us to the concept of deathmatch. But there is another game, also built by ID Software, which has been a major stepping stone in the FPS genre, but it doesn't get the recognition it should. It's a game that changed the way we look at FPS games forever. It's a game that amazed us both with its revolutionary game engine and its bleak atmosphere. It's called Quake, and it turns 20 years old on June 22nd.

Revolutionary technology

Quake was perhaps the game with the biggest impact on the gaming industry as a whole. The Quake engine, built by legendary programmer John Carmack, with the help of Michael Abrash, current Chief Science Officer of Oculus VR, was the first true 3D game engine using a pre-rendered 3D environment to reduce the processing required. Most computers were quite slow at the time, and Carmack wanted the game to run on CPUs clocked at 50 to 75 MHz as well (by comparison, today's CPU's run at 2-3 GHz per core). It also introduced the use of lightmaps and 3D light sources, and other innovative features meant to reduce the load on the time's relatively slow CPUs. But Quake was important from another point of view, too: it is considered the game to kick-start the independent 3D graphics card revolution. Initially, the engine was built to use software rendering, but a version for Rendition's Verité chip was soon released. Later Carmack built a version with OpenGL support (GLQuake), capable of running under Windows 95 and using the capabilities of the 3dfx Voodoo, the most desired standalone 3D accelerator of the 1990s. As an oldtimer in the gaming world, I can confirm that no later version of Quake looked as beautiful as the one running on a VooDoo2.

MOD

Carmack didn't stop at building a new game engine - he created a whole new programming language to do so. QuakeC made it possible for users to modify parts of the game, adding weapons, modifying game logic, and even physics, creating complex scenarios - MODs. This made it easy for MODders to publish their MODs. The first major Quake MOD was Team Fortress (does it sound familiar?) released in 1996, and it was the most played Quake MOD for many years to come. Other popular Quake MODs include Threewave Capture the Flag (CTF), Rocket Arena, and a number of BOTs (AI players designed to kill anything in their path). 20 years after its initial release Quake is still considered one of the most influential video games ever created. A shout out to all Quake fans: it will be soon time to open a bottle of champagne and celebrate the greatest FPS of all time!