Quake is 30 years old. I can't believe I'm still alive. I love this game so dearly. The mods were just incredible, KQP and Girobot in particular.
Those were the for real LAN party days which I'll never get back. As in I had friends bringing over their big ass CRT monitors and PCs for a single occasion and also had ludicrously long network cables. My parents didn't mind, they somehow understood, even with LAN wires running across the kitchen floor. Priceless.
It is nice to see Quake getting some love from the publisher, but I feel like it is not enough.
A bit controversial opinion maybe but I really like Quake Champions and I spent a good amount of time playing it. I even bought some battle passes and merch to support the development. I was really sad that they basically put the game to life support just 1.5 years after its release. The game improved so fast during those 1.5 years, we were getting significant improvements with every patch. I always wondered how much more it would improve if they put just 1 more year into its development.
Quake was special for me, the first time I felt truly immersed in a world. I'd played doom/wolf, obviously, but being able to look down, and move in a 3d space just felt real in a way nothing had until then.
Then the multiplayer - lived in the sticks had a 33.6k modem - ping times on a good day of 300ms. Even with all the limitations (and lack of any sort of predictive netcode) that was it, a very expensive (we paid by the minute for phone bills!), game!
Later teamfortress came out from the guys at RMIT in Melbourne who later went on to Valve (Robin Walker/John Cook from memory) and TF set the bar for so much to come.
I know a lot of folks recommend masters of doom for the atmosphere at ID during quake's difficult development, but actually Michael Abrash's graphics black book (free on github - https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-black-book) is an even better companion, still a wonderfully readable book today, but captures the mindset of the development that we can take much from still. Indeed Abrash's anecdote about sliderule jockey's in the day of pocket calculators rings very true today as we grapple with the impact of AI on our work.
How many of us can thank our careers to id for hooking us on computers and things like quakec and even quake2's game dll source and later full engine sources.
For anyone checking out and liking the anniversary updates, I would like to point out there have been some very high quality mods and map packs released the last couple of years.
It's worth to check them out if you want to enjoy a little quake renascence. For example the Quake Brutalist Jam packs and more. They can be found on your favorite quake distribution site like slipseer or quaddicted.
Dawn of the Machine is available as a free update for Quake owners on XBOX Series X/S, XBOX One, Microsoft PC Store, Game Pass, PC Game Pass, Steam, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch 2 (via backwards compatibility), and Nintendo Switch versions of Quake.
If you read this and you haven’t played arcane dimensions yet, drop everything and go and do that. It makes the quake the best single player FPS ever. The mechanics are even better than vanilla quake, the maps are gorgeous, the enemies diverse and fun. Absolute perfection
Memories, many memories. I remember the endless nights playing Quake on dial-up, 190 ms ping, listening to Nirvana.
There are still people playing on some servers, and the challenge is higher than ever. Although I still have the reflexes, the tics, and I know the maps and respawn times, I had a very hard time fitting into the games. I imagine that for someone starting today, it must be impossible to face 30 years of muscle memory.
I have zero real excuse for never having built the game from source.
I have played with the modding surface available in the quakeC files tho!
I was experimenting with a game design element where firing a weapon didnt decrement the ammo, but auto fired.
In other words, you always fired whatever you had out, removing the ammo hoarder behavior, but also makes you very cognizant about explosive barrels and where you point that rocket.
Surprised they didn't port these to Mac yet. Between M series and Game Porting Toolkit (4 now?) it seems like small effort can unlock huge wave of new players nostalgic for childhood game.
so awesome; as a side note I still host quake net pl (plz do not visit it, it's hosted on my home NAS and currently supports up to 10rpm xD) which was dedicated to Quake 3 and have origins starting 1998; I need to figure out how to keep it alive once I'm dead, lol
I bet this is an attempt by Microsoft at trying to win back fans.
I also noticed IShowSpeed and Kai Cenat promoting a Minecraft playthrough, which I would assume is paid for by Microsoft given what they’ve been saying lately: https://youtu.be/IgJru9870_A
We will be inundated with low-effort fan service until morale improves.
It was always crazy to me the Quake team never jumped on the boomer-shooter bandwagon by releasing a new retro Quake... Excited to play this.
Absolutely played the arse off Quake 2 multiplayer when I was a young'un too, weirdly made so many IRL friends from local Quake 2 servers, you don't really get that from modern multiplayer games...
I had to stop playing online FPS's because the cheating got so bad. I really miss the days of COD/MW2, that was kind of peak for me. I had been playing since Doom on modems... but never saw the cheating so bad. Instant spawn, headshot, nuke.
I don't have a PC anymore so most of the top tier FPS games I can't play anyway since they require kernel level anti-cheat.
Quake – 30th Anniversary Update
(slayersclub.bethesda.net)405 points by dsubburam 6 August 2026 | 193 comments
Comments
Those were the for real LAN party days which I'll never get back. As in I had friends bringing over their big ass CRT monitors and PCs for a single occasion and also had ludicrously long network cables. My parents didn't mind, they somehow understood, even with LAN wires running across the kitchen floor. Priceless.
Edit: typo: lab -> LAN
A bit controversial opinion maybe but I really like Quake Champions and I spent a good amount of time playing it. I even bought some battle passes and merch to support the development. I was really sad that they basically put the game to life support just 1.5 years after its release. The game improved so fast during those 1.5 years, we were getting significant improvements with every patch. I always wondered how much more it would improve if they put just 1 more year into its development.
Then the multiplayer - lived in the sticks had a 33.6k modem - ping times on a good day of 300ms. Even with all the limitations (and lack of any sort of predictive netcode) that was it, a very expensive (we paid by the minute for phone bills!), game!
Later teamfortress came out from the guys at RMIT in Melbourne who later went on to Valve (Robin Walker/John Cook from memory) and TF set the bar for so much to come.
I know a lot of folks recommend masters of doom for the atmosphere at ID during quake's difficult development, but actually Michael Abrash's graphics black book (free on github - https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-black-book) is an even better companion, still a wonderfully readable book today, but captures the mindset of the development that we can take much from still. Indeed Abrash's anecdote about sliderule jockey's in the day of pocket calculators rings very true today as we grapple with the impact of AI on our work.
How many of us can thank our careers to id for hooking us on computers and things like quakec and even quake2's game dll source and later full engine sources.
It's a real IdTech source port that will load the Remaster's PAKs and pretend to be the Remaster to Steam for achievement unlocks.
Dimension of the Machine was fantastic so I'm hyped to play Dawn of the Machine tonight :D
It's worth to check them out if you want to enjoy a little quake renascence. For example the Quake Brutalist Jam packs and more. They can be found on your favorite quake distribution site like slipseer or quaddicted.
https://shop.nin.com/
Dawn of the Machine is available as a free update for Quake owners on XBOX Series X/S, XBOX One, Microsoft PC Store, Game Pass, PC Game Pass, Steam, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch 2 (via backwards compatibility), and Nintendo Switch versions of Quake.
I do still have my Quake CDs...
There are still people playing on some servers, and the challenge is higher than ever. Although I still have the reflexes, the tics, and I know the maps and respawn times, I had a very hard time fitting into the games. I imagine that for someone starting today, it must be impossible to face 30 years of muscle memory.
They encoded the game as an audio CD, so you could toss the disc in a boombox and listen to the soundtrack when you weren't playing. Very cool!
I have played with the modding surface available in the quakeC files tho!
I was experimenting with a game design element where firing a weapon didnt decrement the ammo, but auto fired.
In other words, you always fired whatever you had out, removing the ammo hoarder behavior, but also makes you very cognizant about explosive barrels and where you point that rocket.
insert: how do you do, fellow kinds meme jpg
I also noticed IShowSpeed and Kai Cenat promoting a Minecraft playthrough, which I would assume is paid for by Microsoft given what they’ve been saying lately: https://youtu.be/IgJru9870_A
We will be inundated with low-effort fan service until morale improves.
Absolutely played the arse off Quake 2 multiplayer when I was a young'un too, weirdly made so many IRL friends from local Quake 2 servers, you don't really get that from modern multiplayer games...
meanwhile, where is the new Elder Scrolls?
I don't have a PC anymore so most of the top tier FPS games I can't play anyway since they require kernel level anti-cheat.