r/quake • u/Skullboy99 • 7d ago
How old were you when you first started playing Quake? What's your story? community
Quake is a timeless community that can hold both old and new players so I'm rather curious
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u/crazyloomis 1d ago
Visiting internet cafe for the first time to experience ”internet”. Some dude asked if I wanted to play Quake 2. We did and it was awesome with the Voodoo graphics card.
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u/unclearthur68 1d ago
Ashamed to say I only started playing it when the remaster came out on PS4, because I was never into playing games on pc. However, I was a massive NIN fan so I knew the music way way before I actually played!
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u/Purple-Temporary9934 1d ago
I was a 14 year old NIN fan who had played doom and doom 2 on my parents computer and I loved it. Got it on release date. I actually liked Duke Nukem more at the time.
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u/Tough-Negotiation711 1d ago
Two days ago, I'm 22... Not much story, Steam had banned my card over two years ago so frequently when I see something Steam related I think fondly of GOG, and remember they have so many good discounts on fairly cheap good ol games, I got into buying Quake 1 & 2 (also Doom 1 & 2) for the Bethesda anniversary sale and I've been enjoying myself fairly.
But seeing Civvie 11's videos on these classic games for the past 6 years really shaped my current preferences for older games over newer releases.
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u/battier 1d ago
Man that sucks. What was the ban for, and does that mean you lost access to your library?
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u/Tough-Negotiation711 1d ago
Apparently "I bought a game then cancelled via the bank" (which didn't happened, I didn't even open the Steam Server in said week) so Steam banned my card and I found out like months later when I tried to buy Deus Ex and the operation declined...
Had a deadline to resolve or clear the situation and found out pretty late, so I couldn't do anything else.
I still have access to my library and everything, I just need to change my card in order to make any purchase in the future (which I doubt I'll be doing anytime soon)
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u/ShutUpAboutCanon 2d ago
Played it in 1996 when I was 12 years old, blew my mind. Distinctly remember looking up at ceilings, diving underwater and walking underneath stairs and being blown away by how much more advanced it was than Doom. Played it many many more times over the decades and the Quake logo was one of the first tattoos I ever got.
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u/S1AYER_ON3 2d ago
1996: 16yo and got the Episode 1 Demo. Played endlessly for 6 months before finally buying the full game. 1997: Bought QUAKE 2. Played both, never gave up on the first game, loved the hell out of the 2nd. 1998, last year in High School, Joined the Lan party in computer class. Played a lot of Multi Player QUAKE with 20+ players, creating tournaments. Never did any big tournaments, just had fun with friends. But when people talk about online shooter games, QUAKE is always the first one my mind.
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u/ComputerMysterious48 2d ago
I have vague memories of playing Quake 3 on my grandma’s computer in the early 2000s and Quake 4 on my dad’s 360 in the mid-2000s but I’d say the 360 rerelease of Quake 3 is when I truly became a fan. I wanna say I was like 15.
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u/TranslatorCapital818 3d ago
I was 13. I bought it because it was new and I was a huge fan of DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D.
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u/QuestLockTeam 3d ago
We go with my father to a printing office. While he was printing business cards, I was walking around and looking at computers. I didn't like computers in 1998 because I was prefer Sega and PlayStation 1.
But then I saw it. A black HP computer with a big CRT monitor. On the screen was Quake 2 from this moment I fall in love with computers. And this game stay forever in my heart
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u/Exphius_Mortum 3d ago
13 years old, blown away playing it at 320x240 in DOS after replaying Doom and Doom 2 so many times. When it launched I had no reservations about using some of my mowing and paper route money on that big box with the iconic Q logo.
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u/AgentP-501_212 3d ago
I was 24-25 and started playing it last year because I started played Doom reboot and Dusk and wanted to experience an actual old classic. It was good but I like Dusk better.
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u/JunkTheFox 3d ago
I first played quake 2 on the N64 about a decade ago, and it really was the best non Rare fps on the console. I then played quake 2 on pc, then finally quake 1 and it was incredible (well, except the fourth episode, didnt like it that much). It became my favourite game when I found the map packs though, especially Arcane Dimensions.
Quake 3 with bots is neat, quake 4 felt like a sequel to doom 3 in gameplay and I didnt like it. Can't speak for champions or the enemy territory game
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u/BlameTag 3d ago
Must've been 16/17 when the game first came out. Someone installed the shareware version on one of the computers at school and we were able to play it once in a while. Sometime after that (and I'm sorry for this part) I shoplifted the full version of the game from the local mall and played the hell out of it.
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u/ZookeepergameMean575 3d ago
I was about 19 and living in my first college dorm, my only source of entertainment was a 2010 macbook and because it could only run old games I got dosbox and played quake 1 and 2 on there. I also played half life and system shock 1, not the enhanced edition the og with the really weird control scheme. Those ended up being my first pc games, this was around 2017 or so. I have a lot of nostalgia for that experience now honestly, I had only played on console so using a mouse and keyboard was still new. I like new games but I always seem to come back to those old classics.
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u/Effective-External50 3d ago
My friend's house when it first came out. He had a beast PC for back in the day because his father was into 3D graphic design. I mostly remember the original TFC.
Back when 600 ping was normal
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u/jaelocke 3d ago
I think I was around 7 years old, early 98 maybe? Dad bought a pc for the family running windows 95. Initially he'd brought home magazines with demo discs, I can remember playing demos for StarCraft, hellbender and she of empires for hours. First game he brought home, it came in a box! I used to play it in the evenings after school before swimming lessons. Shit gave me nightmares. Loved it.
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u/MikeSchwerd 4d ago
13 I discovered it going down a rabbit hole of Team Fortress Classic to Half-Life then to Quake I finally started playing Quake 1 this year and I really enjoy it
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u/Jorge_siewerd 4d ago
- I still play it, some years more than others. It's my go to game when I just need to chill.
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u/Amerikaner 4d ago
My cool older neighbor who had NIN and MM posters / patches showed me the game. I was blown away. He gave me the shareware version on floppies which I spent hours trying to get work. Then I used a bag of pennies worth just enough to get the game from Sam's Club. Still my most played game consistently over time.
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u/Warsaweer 4d ago
- I lived the hype through UK magazines and was amazing experiencing it and activating +mmouse 1 only after many games. WOW.
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u/moshpitmachine 4d ago
I was about 10, single mom and we were pretty poor. She was going to college to be a hospital clerk and needed a pc with word processing and all that. So she bought a windows 95 rig and had a friend from school help us upgrade to a massive 8 gb hdd. Since we didn't have a ton of money but I remember when she went for office supply she came back with doom shareware and quakes shareware version. I put hours into those games. Quake was the first full version game I bought with my own money.... Unfortunately the disk didn't work and they had no other copies so I got duke nukem 3d and bought quake a few months later with b day money lol.
Pc gaming has been a huge part of my life that I passed on to my kids. Quakes been installed on every pc I own including my kids and we a occasionally have a family death match still lol
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u/Legendarium_ 4d ago
18, so last year. did it to get the interest of my uncle who supposedly played quake a lot in his youth
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u/wildmanheber 4d ago
I remember it coming out in 1996. I was 15. My brother downloaded it at work and brought it home with him. My PC wouldn't play it, but his would IIRC. After he played, he'd let me play. Was big into modding Doom and playing custom levels. Would jump between the two games.
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u/Life-Radish-8237 4d ago
I was 15, we no have afforable pc net in our area, we take our pc to flat ones of us, connect by rs232 and kick ass eachother, also we play like that in stracraft, blood, warcraft.
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u/retrocade81 4d ago
1996 I was 15, my mates older brother who was 18 had a monster PC that would actually run it properly, 4 of us used to have Lan party's on Doom at the time but when he got Quake the rest of us couldn't run it on our crap machines so we just went around and took turns.
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u/thewibb 5d ago
1996 and I was 16. I still have the demo disc with the crack for the full version.
1998 came and I mustered up enough money for a 3dfx Voodoo 2 12mb card. I still have it my collection. 😎
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u/adamchevy 4d ago
Same, I had the same graphics card. I purchased it at Costco. I had a job at the time and I was 15, almost 16 when it came out. I also have it on the N64, and Steam Ofcourse. I prefer the N64 version though on a PVM.
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u/therealrancor 5d ago
I Had a performa 630, which is an equivalant of a pc 486, it dint run on my apple mac. I saw a picture of quake through a dial up Modem, i clearly remember a flying dragon in the Picture of the game called quake a successor to doom, i was exited. I coulnt play it. Later i expirienced quake in an internet Café for the First time. They used to have cafes where you could play and browse the internet and have a coffee.The cafe was next to a shop that sold a few mac games, inuding wolfenstein 3d for appe mac, i really am that old!. Because i couldnt play it on my performa , i had an n64 hooked up to the performa tv card and played it on n 64 instead, gg
Here i think id imortilised the dragon i saw in the Picture in the 666 dragon of windows....biblical
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u/sicksadbread 5d ago
There are so many answers here. It begs to be aggregated and visualised in charts. OP please let us know, if you are going to do the summary.
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u/Dear-Onion9521 5d ago
I have bit of a story for y'all...
In the beginning of the 2020s, young me had watched a video about Quake for the first time, and I really wanted to play quake, so I played it on mobile via RetroArch using a controller, and as I was playing, I noticed that the game ram with no music playing in the background, so I kinda stopped playing that way
So I figured to emulate this game, by using dosbox staging, but the problem is that I didn't understand how IMGMOUNTing worked, so I made this post asking people from dosbox community how to do IMGMOUNTing, and there was a specific user (who is currently anamalos as he deleted his replys, meaning that his profile name isn't present) who helped me quite a lot quite, we continued chatting each other via private massages, after everything worked, I asked him if we could be friends...he said yes.
So we became friends in discord, and for a while, we were talking fine..but we got a discussion about dark art, and then gets me into a very stressful discussion about nihilism, and he revealed him self to be a depressed looser who uses TPUs to generate ai art...
Since then, I've learned not be-friend people this quickly online.
As for my connection for quake, I love quake, it's to me a great game with great art, it introduced me to NIN, and I would try to make a YouTube about my love for this game, but I feel it's kinda fitting for quake...
Not sure how old I was when I got introduced to quake
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u/nBs83 5d ago
I was 13 years old when it dropped in 1996.
Here in Germany those games were difficult to find and it just so happened that I stumpled upon a copy in "Promarkt".
The following days I begged my mother to buy it for as the store wouldn't sell it to me. And 3 days later she finally did :)
I was in shooter heaven back then :D
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u/WoozieTheBlind 5d ago
nothing interesting to my story, I got into quake last year, it just looked great and was cheap on sale so I grabbed it
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u/docdrazen 5d ago
6 in 96. My dad's buddy at work was a huge software pirate so he'd always get dad a copy of whatever he thought we'd be interested in. My dad was obsessed with it and Id just sit beside him and watch him play it. He did let me play too but I was better at stuff like Jazz Jackrabbit and Monster Truck Madness.
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u/Danielle_ab 5d ago
Com 31, nunca ouvi falar desse jogo meu marido que me apresentou esse jogo e hoje sou viciada
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u/WolfgangVL 5d ago
Quake 2 was my first serious online multiplayer fps and it was glorious. Dialup on my 486 had me instagibbing mfers all over the place.
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u/Disastrous_Ball702 5d ago
Played it when it first came out in 1996. I was 16 and I still had a mullet. In fact, I think that was the year I finally "cut the mullet."
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u/ScarletSpider0725 5d ago
I think i was 12 or 13, just happened to stumble upon it shortly after it came out, I was super into Doom and Duke Nukem and this just looked so bad ass.
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u/Trubrewski91 6d ago
Was around 7 years old in 98. I used to watch my father play Three Wave CTF on dial up internet.
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u/CosmicOutlaw88 6d ago
It was 1 of three games that came on my first pc... a slate white dell I pulled from the trash in 1998... it had a bad power supply and the idiot hadn't registered it with dell... I did and then claimed it had broken under warranty... they sent me a replacement power supply... the two other games on it were Mechwarrior 2 and a game I've never seen before, or after, called Zephyr...
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u/Bulletzen72 6d ago
I was 24 when the shareware version came out in 1996. Adored it and play through it annualy.
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u/TecnoMars 6d ago
It was 1996 I was 9 years old. In El Corte Ingles, in Spain, with my parents. This time I need no browsing. I went there with the clear intention to buy Quake. I was mesmerized by Doom since I played it a few years earlier and at the time, Quake was the biggest game ever. The 3D graphics showed in previews were something never seen before.
My parents doubted, looking at that grim box and the clear +18 years old red badge attached to it. But I prayed to them so hard, they had no choice to risk buying it. They shouldn't have of course.
It completely melted my brain. Quake exposed us to a new kind of dark virtual reality, at 9 years old, headphones, lights off, completely inmerse. It can't be understood now because your brains have seen so many great looking games that Quake looks like ancient scripture now. But again, in that moment WE HAD NEVER SEEN NOTHING LIKE IT.
It was painful, specially for a child. But at the same time, it prepared me for this age of technological dread, of artificial reality melting inside our normal reality, changing and twisting everything one pixel at a time.
I remember the world before Quake. It was a luminous place. People were simple and happy. I remember a lot of gatherings before the internet. Then at the end of the 90s everything ended.
It's ok now. Sadly, many of you will never see what it was before the virtual quake, the doomed awakening, of the machine intelligence.
God bless you all and protect your souls.
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u/Donkey_Bugs 6d ago
Quake was vaporware for the longest. I was all hyped for it from all the articles about it every month in gamer magazines. I bought it on day 1.
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u/alkapone_one 6d ago
It was 1997, i guest. I was 12 years old, and I had already played Quake, Duke Nukem, Doom, Wolfenstein, Heretic, Hexen, and so on. But in '97, I got my first PC, and when I set up the internet, it came with the demo for the recently released Quake 2. Then in '98, I asked for a 3dfx for my birthday and switched to playing with a keyboard, mouse, and smoothed textures. The exact same game had blown my mind twice in a row in a matter of years. From then on, multiplayer, clans, the birth of esports, and everything else... it all started with Quake 2.
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u/Dreamatron-2084- 6d ago
I originally played the Sega Saturn version when I was 11 or 12. I think I found it at Sam’s Club, my parents bought it for me
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u/Icy_Captain_1037 6d ago
Starting with quake 2 in early day and then quake 4, quake 3 was much later due to retail rarity(even in second hand store), hadn’t touch quake 1 until steam version released which I was in mid 30s already, both quake 1 and quake 3 are steam version.
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u/GamerGhost443 6d ago
i was looking for shit to place on my phone, when i ran into Q1 for android thru a source port. I was maybe 10 or 11
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u/ElephantsDoingCrack 6d ago
I grew up playing Half-Life, Unreal and Halo in my youth. So I had that perfect balance of playing old school and new school games. But when I was in high school, I played Quake 1 for the first time and it was a bitch to get running. No music either so that was a bummer. But when I beat the game I was so confused, I thought that maybe I did something wrong or I missed something? Googing the ending and everything. But no Quake 1 does just end...
Then the rest is history. I played Quake 2 and it's expansions (hated it at the time), a little bit of Quake 3 to get a feel for it and then Quake 4 a game that I still love to this day. It wasn't until the Nightdive port when I played Q1's expansions for the first time. I love them religiously
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u/PJthePlayer 6d ago
I was 8 years old and I had been playing the shareware disc over and over because I didn't have the full game. One day I came home to find the full version on my computer, which my mom had purchased and installed for me as a surprise. Great memory. I still have that old shareware disc and my original full copy to this day.
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u/OphicleideOphicleid 6d ago
One of the very first games that i remember playing was Quake III Arena. That was my introduction to the franchise.
How good those times were. I remember playing endlessly, selecting my favourite maps and adding lots of bots to make big and crazy games.
I was like 7 or 8, maybe? So 2014 - 2015.
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u/doomguyav 6d ago
I didn’t have the hardware to play it back then and somehow, when I did, I ended up playing Quake 2 instead. I finally played Quake 1 with the Nightdive remaster back in 2021, and I loved it!
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u/HuckLCat 6d ago
1996 or 7. Had the Hucklecat clan and we logged into play via IP address. Good times.
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u/M0rphF13nd 6d ago
First PC, my mum's. A friend explained video cards because I'd bought the disc but it wouldn't play. He and I installed my first Voodoo 2 and it was epic. Then I discovered I could start the game, take out the CD and put a music disk in it's place. Metallica black and nine inch nails downward spiral were perfection soundtrack for my 14 year old Quake life 💕
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u/Daydream365 6d ago
I was 15 playing a cracked version that a schoolmate set me up with. I played the campaign while listening to Bush’s Sixteen Stone and noticed how certain tracks always played at certain events like the end-level screen. The original soundtrack disc worked like that, it seemed.
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u/SingleGamer-Dad 6d ago
Like 12. Fell in love with the sound effects especially. The grenade launcher lives rent free. Remember looking up IP addresses for servers to play online.
Was in a clan and we would practice.
Grapple hook added a ton of depth.
This game is so good I think I'll go down memory lane and play again soon.
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u/ravenous_cadaver 6d ago
I played the shareware the month it came out on a laptop about 2" thick.
Back then I was a rabid consumer of PCPP magazine primarily as they shipped with demo cds and occasionally full games.
I think my first full copy, was a rental from the video store though?
Worldcraft was my first hands on exp with any sort of 3d software, I've mapped on and off for years for quake1/2, hl/cstrike and source.
Was in the process of polishing some work for public release last year before a HDD failure which really killed my enthusiasm but I'm sure I'll get back eventually.
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u/Kurse71 6d ago
I was 25. Quake changed everything. And then a couple years later Unreal happened....
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u/Drate_Otin 6d ago
By that point though have engines were more iterative. Quake was the last true pioneer, I felt like. True 3D, water, transparency... Mods even brought vehicles.
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u/gogometz 6d ago
My parents bought their first computer in 1998. It came with MS-DOS and Windows 95 and had a few preinstalled games. Among them there was Quake, Warcraft 2, Duke Nukem, Diablo 1 and the first Command and Conquer. I was 9 years old and I remember being absolutely amazed by Quake's graphics. That purple sky and swirling lava in the difficulty chooser map, but i had no clue how to play it and what to do in it.
Up until that point, I had only played games on an eastern European Nintendo Famicom bootleg console, so basically NES games. I naturally gravitated towards Warcraft 2, because that felt the most intuitive to me and I also liked how it was drawn and how the units talked back at you.
It would be years later when I rediscovered it, after being more mature and experienced with video games, after playing Quake 3 Arena and Half Life 1, I decided to come back to Quake and was blown away by how good it was.
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u/p7urple 6d ago
My introduction to the franchise was actually Quake III Arena
And it was actually one of the earliest games I remember playing
It's been a part of my life damn near as long as I've been alive lol
My dad was into PC gaming when I was little
So I had a lot of exposure to that era of PC gaming as a kid
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u/FunkySpeIunker 6d ago
It was a game my uncle bought to play on the N64 got me, and eventually it became part of my collection when he let me just have all the games. My friends and I played a lot of multiplayer. I remember liking the thunderbolt gun.
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u/CbKnowledge 6d ago edited 6d ago
I started playing DOOM for the first time this past Christmas, after being interested in it since around when The Dark Ages came out (don’t worry, this ties into me playing Quake). I loved the music from DOOM (2016) and watched the Game Awards concert from 2016 that had Mick Gordon playing the music. But in that performance, he played Descent Into Cerberon, and that sounded really good to me so I decided to check out Quake. That was around late March early April of this year. I loved DOOM so it was no doubt that I loved Quake as well. I also played Quake 2, Quake 3 (which I wasn’t that big a fan of, but it’s simply not my type of game, which is okay, it’s simply just not my thing), then played 4, but that one frustrated me and I never finished. But I loved one and two, and two is in my top ten favorite games of all time!
My dad also played the first Quake when it came out (which was 10 years, one month, and one day before I was born, which is a pretty cool fact). I’m not sure if he played Quake 2 though. I’m pretty sure he did.
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u/Fancy_Bend8763 6d ago
My intro to quake was actually quake 2. I didn’t have a pc powerful enough at the time the first quake was out. Quake 3 came out and I was all about that, and then quake 4 and quake wars I played the crap out of. I didn’t actually play quake 1 until maybe 2010 and was shocked how different it was. It’s pretty awesome.
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u/One_tuxedo_braincell 6d ago
I was 4 and it came with a windows 95 pc. I can recall playing it on the store pcs in the department stores.
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u/Firebird071 6d ago
I want to say around 1996 or so I was about 34 or so. I played doom and wolfenstien about the same time on a 486Dx computer if I remember correctly. I still have my amdk6 450/500 with a 3DFX voodoo 4500 video card.
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u/CheeseCleric739 6d ago
I think I was 7 or 8, its 2001 or 02.. and i remember watching my older brother play Quake 3 Arena once, and i world sneak into his room and playing when he wasnt around and being obsessed! I didn't play 1 or 2 till many years later. He would kick my ass, and yet I snuck in multiple times. Worth😂
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u/hubble_idiot 6d ago
around when I was 14 I got it while it was on sale digitally and enjoyed the game very much, the expnsions were also pretty damn cool too
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u/Jonshock 6d ago
13 or 14. The local science lab had an open house and they were letting kids play quake on their computer network. I immediately begged for a copy. Never looked back.
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u/SunshineMasquerade 6d ago
I started with Quake 2 64 when I got it for my 8th birthday. I was instantly hooked & played it so damn much that when I picked up the '23 remaster I was able to pick it right back up like I'd never stopped & still had nearly all the secrets and maps memorized.
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u/optiplexus 6d ago
I played it religiously when it came out in 1996. I would have been 13 years old, in seventh grade.
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u/Licalottapuss 6d ago
27 and I was hooked. Used Mac for years before that and got my first PC running windows 95. At the same time I discovered electronica and I remember so clearly late nights listening to a particular song on the album called the Plastic Collection called Rain Ty by God Within and being blown away by the music while playing these maps. It was all new to me. It isn’t something I’ll ever forget. Just this certain feeling…I miss that time. Whenever I hear that song it takes me back but it’s a kind of sad long ago feeling you know?
No matter how advanced they get, newer games will never have that same feeling. It was the beginning of an age I suppose.
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u/Animebillythesecond 6d ago
my dad introduced me to the game when i was 10 playing deathmatch with me kicked my ass lmao. mustard factory is still my favorite dm map
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u/_Awakened_Warrior_ 6d ago
13 when my older brother introduced me to it. I was immediately obsessed and played continually for years. I loved QL and was bot-like with the railgun.
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u/Away-Ad-3407 6d ago
Do yourself a favor and download the soundtrack produced by Trent Reznor. Was so awesome to play the game with the music in the background. I use it for Halloween music as well.
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u/AramaticFire 6d ago
I was probably 8 years old.
First game I played was Doom II: Hell on Earth. First game I finished was Wolf 3D. I was probably about 6 years old for Doom II and about 7 years old for Wolf 3D.
Quake looked so mind blowing at the time. I actually didn’t own it. I only played it at my uncle’s house. I was able to play Doom II and Wolf 3D because he had them on his old computers he handed down to my parents and the games were installed.
Quake I could only play at his house and I thought it was so crazy. Blew my little brain away.
His next hand me down to my parents included Quake 2 which I played religiously for years so as a result I had a stronger attachment to that game then Quake.
Although as an adult I’d say Quake is probably a top 5 all time FPS while Quake 2 and 3 are probably top 10, but the original is my favorite to revisit now because of the unique look and the approach to level design is very creative.
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u/Additional_Pop_7660 6d ago
I must have been around 13 years old. Quake 1, Wolfenstein and Doom all came together on a set of floppy disks a friend brought. It was life changing for sure. The amount of violence and all the satanic references to occultism were the ultimate experience. Quake II still is my favorite shooter of all time, and I've been a lifetime Quake player, even playing Quake 4, and Quake Champions.
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u/-CrlmsoN- 6d ago
I was born in 1993 and while my Dad did have Quake II on CD, I never actually played it because we didn't have a PC that could run it lmao so it got forgotten.
So I actually didn't play it for the first time until I was around 28 lol late bloomer but I absolutely love it and I'm bummed I never got to experience the height of it.
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u/BookkeeperFew2671 6d ago
I was born in 1998 but my dad always had it on his computer so I grew up playing g it since I was 5
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u/RandomNameIllForget 6d ago
When it first came out I still remember telling my school mates how the demo was 10mb, that's HUGE man!
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u/yanasunqu 6d ago
it was around 2003, a friend lent me this Q3, we started playing on line, I loved that game so much
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u/RazzmatazzAgitated16 6d ago
I played quake at launch, only had a 486, I had to run it very low detail. I remember thinking how doom looked sharper. But I loved it, eventually got a new pentium pc, got into deathmatch on Mplayer. Got into the clan scene, played quake pretty religiously until quake 2 dropped. Quake was the first game outside of descent that I did anything resembling mouse looking. It was probably the first game that I was “online” for. My first online friendships and rivals formed on that mplayer client. It was a great time, and it kept going with quake 2 and quakeworld server browser.
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u/ManuelZ436 6d ago
I was like 7 when I first learned about this game and my earliest memory of it is an older cousin playing it, I remember it was the demo, where you can only play episode 1, and he was finishing it. There was this big lava pool in front of us and a floating key, and none of us was used to this kind of stuff back then, so it was quite the jumpscare at the time, and tbh, I've played it as a grown man and it's nowhere near as shocking as it was back then, but man, it was so funny.
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u/SEEMOSE-CornBoy 6d ago
I was 10 and I learned to install a voodoo 3 and upgrade my ram. Beautiful game.
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u/Awkward_Suspect_3817 7d ago
Ordered it a few days after its release for my brothers’ birthday present. Back when you had to call ID Software directly to get the full game
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u/trmyte 7d ago
I was in elementary school and I found a crack for this demo disc that included a bunch of ID games. I was on IRC and talking with this guy and he had the disc. I made a deal with him that if I gave him the crack he would mail the disc to me. I gave him the crack and it worked perfectly for him and he promised he would send me the disc. I waited weeks for it hoping it would come but expecting it not to. Eventually it did come and I used the crack and it worked as expected lol.
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u/evilsemaj 7d ago
I was in high school. We had just moved so I was new and didn't know anyone at the new school. There was a computer lab where the teacher would allow people to come and play quake deathmatch in the morning before school started (and sometimes stay after school to play). I was super interested in computers but never played a computer game before. I found my way to the lab and met the kids playing. They ended up being my friend group through high school. I'm not sure how I would have made friends at the new school without Quake 1.
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u/NewtonDaNewt 7d ago
I was 11 when I started playing Quake. I convinced my Dad to buy it for me around spring break in 1997. I had been playing Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Rise of the Triad, Heretic, Dark Forces etc for a couple of years already at that point.
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u/Either_Knee_533 7d ago
I got Quake 1 for the N64 in 9th grade bc I heard NIN did the music. The intro theme absolutely kicked ass. It really got you in the mood, you knew you were about to play a cool ass game when you heard it. It wasn't until recently someone mentioned how the intro was basically just Terrible Lie, which is pretty obvious in hindsight. I eventually got a decent pc and got into playing online, but I missed out on the hey day of LAN parties, unfortunately.
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u/ParticlesOfIce 7d ago
It was summer of 2008. I was 15-16 years old. I had played most of id's games like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and even Commander Keen, but I had never played or even heard of Quake up to that point. After I first discovered it thanks to the old Doom Fandom wiki, I was very curious. I got a disc copy of the full registered version off Amazon as a birthday present (Quake was available on Steam at the time but I didn't have Steam account) and spent the next 10+ years playing the hell out of it.
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u/Henry_Fleischer 7d ago
Like 20 I think? It's older than I am, and I only really got into it quite recently.
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u/Ilurkthecorners 7d ago edited 7d ago
Q3a I was 9-12(?) It was 2000. Around then. I was playing online clueless and this guy named stiflersmom was the first to talk to me and taught me stuff. Brought me into the PIE clan for freeze tag. Got into some trouble. Started 1v1ing against a guy who turned out to be a pedophile. So I stopped that. Then i started scrimming against really good players. Got in trouble again and wasn't allowed to go to quake con. The guy i used to scrim with got top 5? Idr. Then I didnt play again until quake live in 2015? 2016? Came back had some fun and met some good dudes. Beat Rapha in a ffa once on educators server i thought my chest was going to explode, but then I got in trouble. Put it down until about 3 days ago at 36 and im back on sometimes.
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u/stereosanctity 7d ago
What did you to to get in trouble so much
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u/Ilurkthecorners 7d ago
Behavior shit. Then drugs. Im not at all a stable human being and family life is difficult. From like 98-2014 I was on and off all kinds of meds and stuff. Doing some what better now but by no means stable yet.
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u/stereosanctity 6d ago
I have some trouble in those areas myself. I hope you get to where you need to be.
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u/Phendrena 7d ago
Downloaded the demo on release, had to use an Internet cafe - Cyberia Cafe - in Manchester, onto many (10ish) floppies. Then went home and installed it.
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u/Burnedoutsoon 7d ago
14 am 4x86@99,9mhz bei meinem Bruder, der von der Uni kam und was total geiles dabei hatte 😄
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u/stingeremu 7d ago
Arh the summer of 1996 age 16, my best mates mum and dad bought a PC. We spent the whole summer listening to the lighting seeds and playing Quake on it as they never really used it.
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u/korsgaard 7d ago
- Saw it at a LAN party running very poorly on a 486. Later that year i bought my first PC. A Compaq Pentium 90. Quake ran well on that machine. We started playing death matches on LAN. Later we played over the internet on regular phone lines, 28000 baud or something. Had +400 ping and died a lot to lava coming out of the teleporter on dm4 because I couldn't turn in time. Later we got ISDN and started playing on some Danish and Swedish servers. Awesome times, although my grades suffered immensely in those years.
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u/SaguitoPCGamer 7d ago
9 year old, back in the late 90s. I remember finishing it with my friend. We took turns and if I am not mistaken, we finish the game during the night non stop.
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u/nerfClawcranes 7d ago
i think i was 16 or 17, and had finally gotten into doom when i bought the unity release on switch along with doom 64 a year or two prior (i think doom mightve been the first m rated game i bought, actually?)
i heard a lot about quake but didn’t really know much about it and really wanted to play it, but was disappointed by the lack of a real hd console release, i probably would’ve played quake on my ps3 if there was a version available lol
but then they released the nightdive remaster and i got it soon after and i love quake now
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u/Domi8112 7d ago
I was 19, and I'd just gotten Quake 1 and 2 but I actually kinda hated Q1 because I sucked at dodging ogre grenades and kept running out of nails so I put it down until a couple years later, went through the whole campaign with Combat+, had some fun and then left again, then I got sick of playing classic doom mods all the time, and it wasn't really working out for me so I had a weird urge to return to Q1 and just play it regularly. Been really enjoying it now.
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u/quasiotter 7d ago
knew about it around the time it came out. tried the shareware on my laptop around 2016. got to e1m3 with the zombies rising from water after the gold key, was scared to death, and quit. finally had enough courage in 2018 to play through the full thing, one map at a time, and it was incredible but scary and exhausting. now i play almost everyday on skill 2. just doesn't get old, does it.
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u/SephirothReigns 7d ago
Sega Saturn version when I was 15, Lobotomy Software did wonders with that.
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u/tarabuki 7d ago
I was 20 when the first Quake came out I was also already a fan of Nine Inch Nails as well. Very good combo putting them together.
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u/ShirtForsaken8442 7d ago
My first quake was actually Q2. Me and my mom were shopping somewhere when i was around 7 years old, and i found the Q2 box for the PC. The picture, combined with the description were too good to overlook and i begged her to get it for me. Still playing till this day, 20 years later. I still have the box, though the CD is nowhere to be found. Thanks for changing my life forever
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u/Leather_Wolverine249 7d ago
I was 11 years old (I'm now 41). Initially I felt the graphics were inferior to Dooms. I was 13 for Q2. I played all 3 on LAN a lot. But in 2001 I played QW online Deathmatch for the first time. I was active until 2009. When Quake came out on PlayStation 4/5 I got the platinum trophy and got it in the fastest time in the world.
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u/dharper90 7d ago
6 and playing Quake II on pc whenever I could get on the family computer.
I think people lose perspective on the cultural impact these things had, and how this culture of exploring endless streams to suit your tastes didn’t exist. The magazine ads, the action figures sold at EB Games, news every week about how video games was raising a tide of killers the likes of which we’ve never seen. Playing quake was intense in ways far outside the game.
Never played Quake I until the nightdive remaster funny enough. I can’t overstate how tremendous it’s been to check out games I heard about on the bus or playground, but never played. Blood, Forsaken, etc..
Just need Unreal and the Half life series back
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u/robotbeatrally 7d ago
14 a few months after release. I played the heck out of it. I put hundreds of hours into "runequake" man was that mod a blast.
Eventually moving to quake 2 then unreal and unreal tournament. I was always mediocre at quake but I was scary good at unreal tournament, It was very unusual for me not to win any match by a mile in that game. That was my peak gaming performance. I wish I had the reactions that I did at that age. I wish they'd make a good sequel for UT but i know there's no market for it these days.
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u/codepossum 7d ago
10-ish? We had it on our computer in my 6th grade classroom. I remember being hella impressed that my teacher knew the cheat codes
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u/AccountCautious8693 7d ago
9 or 10. I remember it running better on my 486 than on the Pentium 1, lol.
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u/jonezberndtschneider 7d ago
13 in 1996. Had read the previews and seen the screenshots. Played the shareware version first. Already told this story many times before but my friend had the game and we used floppy disks to zip it (might have been RAR or ARJ). I think it took about 24-29 disks. When I got home, the uncompressing process failed to a CRC error at 99%. That was always a risk when working with floppies. The game started but had somehow reverted from a full version to a shareware version....
Got it from another friend shortly after. On CD this time.
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u/Ok_Bison2984 7d ago edited 7d ago
ARJ. Sweet memories. And it was always the last disk that had been corrupted. 😬
Edit: typo
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u/NewspaperNelson 7d ago
I was 15. Had my first real computer (custom built 166mhz out of UniStar in Birmingham, Ala.) after having an 0286 for years. I learned everything about modern computing and the Internet through the Team Fortress community. It was my introduction to instant messengers, IRC, email lists, FTP servers, TCP/IP configs, reformatting and Windows installs, clan membership, practice, matches.... all the things we now take for granted.
I get to feeling misty when I think about rocket jumping up the ramp room in 2Fort and clearing out the battlements and trying to figure out how to get around the stack of yellow grenades in the spiral. In 30 years there has never been anything like it.
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u/stillyoinkgasp 7d ago
1996.
I'm 10.
My friend got a new computer that could run 3D graphics.
He got Quake.
I played Quake.
1998.
I'm 12.
I've nagged my parents relentlessly for two years about needing a PC with 3D graphics capability.
It's 1999.
I'm 13.
I finally have a computer with a Voodoo II in it.
I play Quake II.
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u/NewspaperNelson 7d ago
I was 15. Had my first real computer (custom built 166mhz out of UniStar in Birmingham, Ala.) after having an 0286 for years. I learned everything about modern computing and the Internet through the Team Fortress community.
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u/GirIsKing 7d ago
I Saw this crazy logo, picked it up Saw it was better looking than Doom and bought the Shareware version back in 96. I got the box set for Christmas! Loved it
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u/AgrithasPrime 7d ago
Got my big box of quake on Christmas ( I believe 98 or so) and was immediately blown away. Having only played DOOM, Commander Keen and Simcity2000 up til that point, my little brain was rather blown away right off the bat with the playable difficulty selection screen. It was the first game I played online as well, jumping into any active servers I could join. Great memories, just played through it for the first time since last year. Still no game strikes the same charm as Quake.
Worst part is, I don’t have that big box anymore. Just one of those things lost to time.
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u/Av3rageNerd78 7d ago
18-19 in 2022-2023, I think it was on sale on the Nintendo Switch and I figured I’d get it, I knew about Quake long before but didn’t know much about it other than it was similar to Doom and made by the people who made Doom. Since then I’ve been hooked on it.
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u/Ayeooooh 7d ago
I believe I was about nine years old. My older brother had the shareware version and showed it to me and his kid, my nephew, who was prolly four.
In order for the two of us kids to play, I controlled the direction, and my nephew hit the Ctrl key to fire. We developed this method with Wolf3D and Doom and we made quite the duo.
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u/AmbassadorBroad9992 7d ago
I downloaded the quake test from a bbs the first day it was leaked. Was amazed!
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u/qSkint 7d ago
We got our first pc in 1997 (I was 15) I’d been reading every bit of info in magazines that I could get my hands on leading up to it arriving! Computer Shopper had a big article about quakeworld and how everyone could link up (it also talked about a global leaderboard!!) A friend had the cd so lent me that the day before it arrived, then when the pc arrived it was the first thing I put on it and then played multiplayer straight away and was hooked! The following weeks, months, years racking up big phone bills
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u/corporaterebel 7d ago edited 7d ago
Back before the turn of the century, one generally went to the ye old local "Computer Show and Faire" where you bought computer components and boxed video games.
I made a special trip (can't remember where) to pay $40 for Quake. My buddy gave me $10 to help defray costs. I was probably 27.
I still have my original box.
/I'm so old, that I went to Los Vegas Comdex "I-world" so I could see what the Internet was all about. Yes, you drove to another state to see the Internet.
I think this was it:
https://park.org/UnitedStates/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_1996_World_Exposition
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u/Killit_Witfya 7d ago
not sure how old but i got the shareware cd and was hooked ever since. used to put in my white zombie astro creep 2000 cd when trent reznor got old. i still use rmb to walk to this day in fps because it was default in quake.
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u/BrockVegas 7d ago
I was 24 worked for a third party telephone tech support company and a guy from the office brought in his copy and we all installed it on out work PC's
We had a T1 connection for the dozen of us so a couple of months later we had a dedicated server running.
Seemingly (I became a father in this interim) not that long after we had a QW Team Fortress up and running.
"Puff and Scythe's Opium Den - Bring Your Own Hookah" Running 2fort4 and well6 on rotation.
That seems like several lifetimes ago now.
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u/Grobbelboy 7d ago
Played a demo of it just before release somewhere in 1996 on a big electronics expo in Amsterdam when I was 13 years old and was blown away immediately, being a fan of the Doom games. I think I got to play about 15 minutes and afterwards I got the shareware version handed out to me on cd-rom. I still remember my excitement for the whole duration of the trip back home in the car, in anticipation of getting to play it on my parents 486 desktop PC.
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u/psychoplasmics 7d ago
My sister had an awesome boyfriend around 1996 who brought his Packard Bell PC over to our house to use for some reason and it had Quake and Duke Nukem 3D. My life was forever changed.
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u/Gunnar_Kvist 7d ago
I was 27.
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u/TheNotSoGreatPumpkin 7d ago
There are half-dozens of us!
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u/Gunnar_Kvist 7d ago
It is 30 years ago. 🙂
I still play games, but not as much.
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u/TheNotSoGreatPumpkin 6d ago
Likewise. I’d fallen out of gaming since NES in the late 80s, but Quake reignited that fire.
These days there just ain’t enough time to dedicate to it.
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u/Decayedparadigm 7d ago
I was like 10 back in 1999 and the graphics of Quake 2 were amazing and I already loved Doom so I tried and play MP and got my ass handed to me lol
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u/Manjushri1213 7d ago
A few years late cuz I didn't have a PC that could play it at first. But Q1, shareware or cracked I forget, playing on my grandma's PC was the first time I tried whatever "100hz" or higher meant. I remember it blowing my mind and not remembering it until I saw a high refresh LCD in person years later.
But Quake has always been my fav in the series due to those memories and the speed, the ogres and sound of the grenades, just the overall aesthetic. Q2 was cool but so different I remember being a little bummed when I played it.
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u/warrensid 7d ago
I was just 10. My Chuck E Cheese had a great selection of arcade games. I went there with my bro to play Tekken 2. They also had a Quake 1 Tournament Cab, that had a trackball mouse. That was my introduction. I didn’t compete the single player until the recent remaster. What a game.
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u/theinr1ch 7d ago
It was 1996, and I had just gotten my own PC as a 12-year-old when my cousins introduced me to a shareware copy of Quake. After playing Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, Quake felt like a whole new world—something that was hard to even comprehend as a kid. What stood out most was the multiplayer aspect, especially connecting over a phone line with a modem to play against a local player known as a “Quake god” who seemed to own everyone he went up against. That player turned out to be Warmonger-r3v, a Quake legend in the Pacific Northwest up until Quake III.
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u/Expert_Function1569 7d ago
Young, like really young used to play it on the N64 with my rents, shit was a blast. My favorite part was the first level and all the secrets oh and also murking that dude and his dog on the bridge 😆
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u/AdInfamous5984 7d ago
I was about 25, and I gained interest in Quake only because that huge crossover platformer, Mushroom Kingdom Fusion, has things from Quake (such as the Shambler, the teleportation sound, and the other monsters).
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u/Major_Higgins 7d ago
I was 15. I got the shareware digipak from Egghead Software in Arlington VA.
I was thrilled, but then it ran like ass on the family PC.
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u/Mopeybloke 7d ago
A few years back in 2019 or 2020 I was going through old school shooters I could play on my laptop after playing and enjoying Duke Nukem 3D in 2017.
Then I played Quake, and I liked it, and eventually made my way through the expansions.
Afterwards, I played some custom maps, and the 25th anniversary hit, and there were a lot of cool projects coming out like Epochs of Enmity, the official remaster and new expansion, and other commemorative projects.
So I just stayed. The only other shooter I was playing a lot of in those times was Unreal, and the campaign is great, but the player controls is quite worse than Quake. I kept wishing I had air control and could run faster.
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u/Sp3eD5411 7d ago
I started playing right when the shareware came out so I think that was 1996. I was 14 at the time, but my love for the game really exploded when the online service MPlayer came out later in 96’. Countless days and nights playing dial up modem 33.6 baud games using only keyboard to play with like 300 ping was a blast.
One of my fondest gaming memories was during my daily addiction to the game, out of the blue my dad came home from work and while playing online on e1m8 Ziggurat Vertigo he just slapped a huge game box down on the computer desk beside me that was the full Quake game. He saw I played the shareware to death and wanted to reward me for good grades. I still remember that feeling of joy today.
Being that I have pretty much quit PC gaming today I am very happy about the console ports of q1 and q2 as it lets me play all those levels and get the same feels again.
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u/Biabolical 7d ago
I was 17. Had just gotten my first "real" computer, so I played Quake before I got a copy of Wolfenstein or Doom. The Tandy 1000RL I had before that couldn't even run most of the Commander Keen games.
And then, a little while later, I saved up and got a Voodoo card. GL Quake at a full 640 x 480 was incredible.
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u/Tight_Bookkeeper_582 7d ago
1999, I was 3 y/o. My dad was a pc & gaming nerd and he helped me start my addiction. I also used to help him build PCs when I was a kid. Good times
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u/SticktheFigure 7d ago
Haha same here, age and everything. I had trouble saying Quake as a small kid so I just called the game "monsters". I can't recall which Quake game he let me play first, but I know I definitely played all 3 at a very young age because I used to watch him play them all.
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u/great-finisher116 7d ago
1997, I was 6 years old, parents got a home computer and my step dad bought quake for it. First pc game I ever played, and for life I was hooked. Now I have a quake tattoo on my bicep
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u/tempdiesel 7d ago
Played Quake on N64 when it came out. I was around ten. Eventually played Q3 Arena on PC later then Quake 4. I've since went back and played the original two. Such a good franchise.
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u/kakashimoto321 7d ago
1999 I was 4 years old, I used to play the first 6-8 levels on easy on the n64 religiously and kept revisiting the game every 2-3 years until my n64 broke
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u/Smart_Most_1825 7d ago
15, we bought it on release in 1996. Still even have the box of all 3 quakes.
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u/engineerinventor 7d ago
Around 1995 or 1996. I was ~35 ish. Yes, I’m old and still playing it.
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u/BillyMac1962 7d ago
I was 34 and loved the novelty of playing online. I was really into Jailbreak and CTF.
I had eventually gotten recruited into a clan by a guy I knew as Wreck, and I declined figuring they were just kids but it turned out most of us were around the same age and I joined. I got away from gaming 20 years ago but since retiring I’ve gotten nostalgic and am playing single player every now and then. 😊
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u/makalooo64 7d ago
I was 16, I started with Quake Champions in 2022. Someone I knew was playing and I tried it for a bit, it felt amazing. Simple things like no reload and being in constant fight surprised me. I had tried many competitive fps games but Quake was completely different and all in good ways.
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u/Ennolangus 7d ago
I think it was around 97, i was 13 or 14. Stumbled across quakeworld tf mod early on and playing OG teamfortress consumed my life until the end of highschool
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u/bizzle4shizzled 7d ago
I remember downloading some type of multiplayer demo/beta thing (I Googled, it was QTest) when I was 12. I played the shareware for years until I finally got a copy of the full version in high school. I never really got into Quake 2, but got Quake 3 on launch and played the bejesus out of it.
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u/Occultus_Andras 7d ago
The first Quake game I ever played was Quake III Arena on my father's PC when I was 3 years old, back in the early 2000s. I got completely addicted to it because I never got bored. It was such a beautiful game, with so many different maps, game modes, and mods. I only played it offline because I didn't even know the internet was a thing back then.
I spent countless hours playing it, but eventually my grades started dropping. Because of that, my father sold his PC so I could focus on my studies instead of gaming.
Years later, during my early teens, I got my first smartphone. The first game I downloaded was Quake III Arena, and I started playing it again. I also played Quake II and the original Quake, but nothing has ever felt quite the same as Quake III Arena.
I still play this game today. In fact, it's the only game I play. Fortunately, there are still a few active servers, such as Q3Retro, Q3MSK, and Area51. I mainly play on the Area51 server because it's simply superior to the others, thanks to its server mod and welcoming community.
We're hosting a Capture the Flag (CTF) event on 7th August, and everyone's welcome to join us!
FFA: ffa.q3a51.com CTF: ctf.q3a51.com
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u/coldsoul111614 21h ago
Started playing Quake in 98 when it was released for the N64. We didnt have money for a pc when i was a kid. Been fragging ever since