QuakeWorld was glitchy in weird ways, but I fondly remember the skinning capabilities of this game, and I’d hop online with friends and run around levels populated with every manner of strange characters, shooting each other into the early hours of the morning. The result was QuakeWorld, which used technology called client-side prediction to help ease latency issues on the dial-up connections that were common at the time.

Having met the challenge of 3D graphics, Carmack turned his attention to Internet-based multiplayer. The effect was similar to what we experience with VR today, where an additional dimension is added to the game. This changed everything: Those blocky brown graphics were smoothed into clean edges, both on the level surfaces and on the animated characters you fought with. I jumped all over Quake when it was released, but later in the year I purchased a 3DFX Voodoo graphics card so I could play the game with hardware acceleration. (And those of others, like American McGee.) And it of course had Romero’s level designs. It had Microsoft graphics guru Michael Abrash working as John Carmack’s muse. Where DOOM was fast and frenetic, Quake, initially, was … slow. But what I recall are John Carmack’s plan file updates, John Romero’s over-the-top boasting, and then the initial, weird first test level, with its blocky brown graphics. Quake’s history is interesting-and I strongly recommend the book Masters of Doom, which Amazon will sell you in paper, Kindle, and Audible formats-for the best overview of that. Every shooter that’s been made since, including the Call of Duty titles I now prefer, could not and would not exist if it weren’t for Carmack, and for Quake. But it wasn’t until Quake that Id’s genius platform maker, John Carmack, was able to bring us into the world of real time 3D. Looking at the earliest shooters, we see some important milestones, such as DOOM, of course, and Duke Nukem 3D. And, as it turns out, for me personally as well. And that’s true for both the broader games industry. No company has had a greater impact on these games than Id Software, and among its many important achievements stands Quake, which was released 20 years ago this week. Long time readers know I’ve been a fan of first shooters since the game genre was invented.

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