Quake

Quake is a 1996 first-person shooter developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive, released as shareware on June 22, 1996 and at retail on July 22, 1996 for MS-DOS and Windows PCs. It was id’s follow-up to Doom, known for its real-time 3D rendering — polygonal monsters, true 3D levels, and early OpenGL support through GLQuake — and for the influence of its multiplayer. It scored 94 on Metacritic on PC and sold 1.4 million copies by the end of 1997. In 2025 it was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Its soundtrack, written by Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, is as widely quoted as its gameplay. Thirty years on it is still being added to: the Dawn of the Machine anniversary episode arrived on August 7, 2026.

This card covers the original 1996 game and its 2021 enhanced re-release. Quake II, Quake III Arena, Quake 4, and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars have their own pages, as do the expansions linked below.

Technical Specifications

Ranger, the Slipgates, and Shub-Niggurath

Teleportation experiments called slipgates have been compromised by an alien force known as Quake, which sends armies of monsters through them into Earth’s military installations. The player is a nameless soldier, usually called the Ranger, who is sent through the gates to other dimensions to collect runes and destroy the source of the invasion. The enemy is Lovecraftian — the final antagonist is Shub-Niggurath, borrowed from the Cthulhu Mythos — and the setting slides from military bases into medieval castles and Gothic ruins as dimensions bleed together. The idea came from a Dungeons & Dragons campaign John Carmack ran for the id staff, and the early plans leaned toward role-playing before John Romero pushed the project toward fast, constant action. The result is less a story than an atmosphere: grey-brown corridors, cult symbols, and the sense of a base overrun by something older than the people in it.

Real 3D, Rocket Jumps, and Nine Inch Nails

The Ranger carries up to eight weapons across four ammo types — an axe, shotgun, nailgun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, and the lightning gun among them — with power-ups such as Quad Damage. The levels are genuinely three-dimensional, vertical and non-repeating, and each of the four episodes is built by a different designer with its own look. Only the first episode has a traditional boss, Chthon. The most lasting contributions were movement techniques that the engine produced by accident and the community turned into skills: strafe-jumping and rocket-jumping, now standard in competitive shooters. Reznor not only composed the score — industrial ambience rather than melodies — but voiced the protagonist, and it was American McGee who suggested the band.

QuakeWorld and the Birth of Online Shooters

Multiplayer was always the point. The original supported deathmatch and co-op over LAN, but its early internet play suffered from latency. QuakeWorld, released in December 1996, added client-side prediction and made fast online deathmatch usable over dial-up and early broadband. GLQuake (January 1997) and WinQuake (March 1997) followed, and in 1999 Carmack released the engine source code under the GPL, which started a long line of mods, source ports, and the Quake done Quick speedrun movies. Quake also shaped the culture around it: it helped launch machinima and esports, and the modding scene grew up around it. Most of the original team left id soon after release, citing creative differences.

Expansions and the 2021 Re-release

Two official expansions followed in March 1997, Scourge of Armagon by Hipnotic and Dissolution of Eternity by Rogue (Scourge of Armagon, Dissolution of Eternity). In August 2021 Nightdive Studios and Bethesda released an enhanced edition with improved visuals, crossplay multiplayer, and controller support, together with Dimension of the Machine from MachineGames (the studio’s earlier free Dimension of the Past was added to it). On August 7, 2026, to mark the game’s 30th anniversary, MachineGames and id released Dawn of the Machine, a free update for owners: a 19-map continuous episode with no hub, a new soundtrack, a new deathmatch map, reworked enemies (the Rocket Ogre, Demo Dog, and Blood Shambler), and new weapon variants such as a ricocheting Laser Cannon and a lightning-infused Super Axe.

Where to Play It Today

Quake is on GOG as Quake: The Offering — $9.99, regularly under $4 — which contains both the original moddable game and the enhanced edition, plus the two classic expansions and the MachineGames episodes including Dawn of the Machine. The enhanced edition is also available on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and Steam. The original DOS-era data remains playable through source ports such as Quakespasm and Darkplaces, which is the usual route for the mod community. For the genre as a whole, this is the place it learned to move.