Quake is a first-person shooter developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive, released in June 1996. The successor to Doom, it was id Software’s first fully three-dimensional game engine, rendering enemies, geometry, and projectiles in true 3D. Players battle through four episodes of gothic, Lovecraftian dungeons against shambling undead and interdimensional monsters. Its engine, multiplayer infrastructure, and Nine Inch Nails soundtrack made it one of the most technically and culturally significant releases in gaming history.
Quake was designed by John Romero, American McGee, Sandy Petersen, and Tim Willits and released on 22 June 1996 as shareware, with the full game available via retail and mail order. It followed Doom and Doom II as id Software’s third major FPS, but represented a complete architectural shift: where Doom used a 2.5D engine with sprites, Quake ran on a true 3D engine with polygonal models, real-time lighting, and seamless geometry. The setting abandoned Doom’s sci-fi corridors for a dark fantasy world of stone fortresses and subterranean horrors, with a tone heavily influenced by H.P. Lovecraft.
Quake’s campaign was divided into four episodes, each accessible from a central hub and culminating in a boss encounter. The arsenal — axe, shotgun, double-barrelled shotgun, nailgun, super nailgun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, and thunderbolt — offered more tactical variety than its predecessors. Enemies moved in three-dimensional space; Fiends could leap across rooms; Scrags floated and strafed; Shamblers absorbed punishment and discharged lethal lightning. The rocket jump — propelling the player upward with a downward-aimed rocket at the cost of health — became a defining movement technique in competitive play. The engine supported coloured lighting, underwater rendering, and dynamic shadows at a quality not previously seen in real-time games.
Quake shipped with QuakeWorld, a client-server multiplayer architecture that became the foundation for online gaming as it exists today. Competitive play — deathmatch, team fortress, capture the flag — flourished in the late 1990s and produced some of the earliest professional esports players. The ambient industrial soundtrack by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails set a tone unlike anything in games at the time. The engine was released as open source in 1999, producing a vast ecosystem of source ports and mods still active today. Time ranked it #14 on their 2016 list of the 50 best video games ever made. An enhanced remaster by Nightdive Studios was released in 2021.