Quake

The player takes the role of a soldier (later named Ranger), whose mission is to travel through these slipgates in order to find and destroy the source of the invasion. The game is split between futuristic military bases and medieval, gothic environments, featuring both science fiction and fantasy weaponry and enemies as the player battles possessed soldiers and demonic beasts such as ogres or armor-clad knights. Quake heavily takes inspiration from gothic fiction and in particular the works of H. The game went through many revisions during development, and had originally been inspired by a Dungeons & Dragons campaign held among id Software staff. The successor to id Software's Doom series, Quake built upon the technology and gameplay of its predecessor. Unlike the Doom engine before it, the Quake engine offered full real-time 3D rendering and had early support for 3D acceleration through OpenGL. After Doom helped popularize multiplayer deathmatches, Quake added various multiplayer options. Online multiplayer became increasingly common, with the QuakeWorld update and software such as QuakeSpy making the process of finding and playing against others on the Internet easier and more reliable. Quake featured music composed by Trent Reznor and his band Nine Inch Nails. Often cited as one of the best video games ever made. Despite its critical acclaim, Quakes development was controversial in the history of id Software. Due to creative differences and a lack of leadership, the majority of the team left the company after the game's release, including co-founder John Romero. An "enhanced" version of Quake was developed by Nightdive Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks and was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One consoles in August 2021, including the original game's first two expansions and two episodes developed by MachineGames. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions were released in October 2021.

• Title — Quake • Developer — id Software • Publisher — GT Interactive • Designer — John Romero Sandy Petersen American McGee Tim Willits • Programmer — John Carmack Michael Abrash John Cash • Artist — Adrian Carmack Kevin Cloud Paul Steed • Composer — Nintendo 64 Aubrey Hodges Scourge of Armagon, Dissolution of Eternity Jeehun Hwang • Series — Quake • Engine — Quake engine • Platforms — * IBM AIX • AmigaOS • Classic Mac OS • RISC OS • Saturn • Nintendo 64 • Linux • Windows • PlayStation 4 • PlayStation 5 • Xbox One • Xbox Series X/S • Nintendo Switch • Genre — First-person shooter • Modes — Single-player, multiplayer

• Illustration — The double-barreled shotgun in use against an Enforcer on E3M1 In Quake single-player mode, players explore levels, facing monsters and finding secret areas before reaching an exit. Switches or keys open doors, and reaching the exit takes the player to the next level. Before accessing an episode, there is a set of three pathways with easy, medium, and hard skill levels. The fourth skill level, "Nightmare", was described by the game manual to be "so bad that the entry is hidden, so people won't wander in by accident". The game has no dedicated "use" key; players instead physically push against objects to activate them. The player can wield up to 8 weapons, but will always carry at least an axe and a shotgun. Four separate ammo pools are carried: shells, nails, rockets, and cells, with each used for different weapons. Like Doom, power-ups can be found and used for a short duration. Among them are the Ring of Shadows, granting invisibility, the Pentagram of Protection, granting invulnerability, and the Quad Damage, which quadruples every weapons' damage. Armor comes in three tiers and grants both durability and effectiveness, and each armor blocks the same percentage of damage regardless of durability. Quake single-player campaign is organized into four individual episodes with seven to eight levels in each (including one secret level per episode; episode one's secret level has very low gravity). If the player's character dies, they must restart at the beginning of that level. The game may be saved at any time in the PC versions and between levels in the console versions. Upon completing an episode, the player is returned to the hub "START" level, where another episode can be chosen. Although the manual recommends playing them in order, episodes may be completed in any sequence. Each episode starts the player from scratch, without any previously collected items. Episode one (which formed the shareware or downloadable demo version of Quake) is the only episode with a traditional boss at the end; the other three episodes have no bosses. The ultimate objective at the end of each episode is to recover a magic rune. After all of the runes are obtained, the floor of the hub level opens up to reveal an entrance to the "END" level, leading to the game's final boss. In multiplayer mode, players on several computers connect to a server (which may be a dedicated machine or on one of the player's computers), where they can either play the single-player campaign together in co-op (cooperative) mode, or play against each other in multiplayer (see LAN party). When players die in multiplayer mode, they can immediately respawn, but will lose any items that were collected. Similarly, items that have been picked up previously will respawn after some time, and may be picked up again. The most popular multiplayer modes are all forms of deathmatch. Deathmatch modes typically consist of either free-for-all (no team organization), one-on-one duels, or organized teamplay with two or more players per team (or clan). The gameplay in Quake was considered unique for its time because of the different ways the player can maneuver through the game. The player can start and stop moving suddenly, jump unnaturally high, and change direction while mid-air. Bunnyhopping or strafe-jumping grant faster movement, while rocket jumping enables the player to reach otherwise-inaccessible areas at the cost of some health. Many of these non-realistic behaviors contribute to Quakes appeal. Multiplayer Quake was one of the first games singled out as a form of electronic sport. A notable participant was Dennis Fong, who won John Carmack's Ferrari 328 at the Microsoft-sponsored Red Annihilation tournament in 1997.

• Illustration — Many of the enemies of Quake were inspired by the characters of American writer H. P. Lovecraft (pictured in 1934) In the single-player game, the player takes the role of the protagonist, unnamed in Quake but referred to as Ranger in later games (voiced by Trent Reznor), who is sent into a portal in order to stop an enemy code-named "Quake". The government had been experimenting with teleportation technology and developed a working prototype called a "Slipgate"; the mysterious Quake compromised the Slipgate by connecting it with its own teleportation system, using it to send death squads to the "human" dimension in order to test the martial capabilities of humanity. The sole surviving protagonist in "Operation Counterstrike" is Ranger, who must advance, starting each of the four episodes from an overrun human military base, before fighting his way into other dimensions, reaching them via the Slipgate or their other-worldly equivalent. After passing through the Slipgate, Ranger's main objective is to collect four magic runes from four dimensions of Quake; these are the key to stopping the enemy and ending the invasion of Earth. Each episode represents individual dimensions that the player can access through the Slipgate or magical portals (in the case of the latter three episodes) that are discovered over the course of the game. The various realms consist of a number of gothic, medieval, and lava-filled caves and dungeons, with a recurring theme of hellish and satanic imagery reminiscent of Doom, such as pentagrams, images of demons, and depictions of torture. The game's setting is heavily influenced by dark fantasy, including H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. In particular, Dimensional Shamblers appear as enemies, the "Spawn" enemies are called "Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua" in the manual, the boss of the first episode is named Chthon, the main villain is named Shub-Niggurath and is explicitly stated to be an Old One, and the four episodes all have Lovecraftian names.

• Illustration — John Carmack (pictured in 2006) programmed Quake In the early 1990s, the staff at id Software had a private Dungeons & Dragons game, which would go on to inspire a number of elements in their titles over the following years. With John Carmack as DM, the campaign featured a group of adventurers named the Silver Shadow Band. The group were named for the silver dragon on which they flew, and each represented one of the core stats of the game. Among them was a powerful character named Quake, representing strength, who fought with a magic hammer capable of destroying buildings. Quake was accompanied by a floating magic artifact named the Hellgate Cube which attacked his foes with lightning bolts. John Romero described fighting alongside Quake as the most fun they had playing D&D. The Silver Shadow Band did "contract work for Justice, an even more powerful group". The original campaign concluded in early 1992, after Romero's character made a deal with a demon, exchanging a book called the Demonomicron for a magic sword called the Daikatana, which resulted in a demonic invasion that wiped out the Material Plane. A preview included with id Software's first release, 1990's Commander Keen, advertised a game entitled The Fight for Justice as a follow-up to the Commander Keen trilogy. It would feature a character named Quake, "the strongest, most dangerous person on the continent", armed with thunderbolts and a "Ring of Regeneration". Conceived as a VGA full-color side-scrolling role-playing video game, The Fight for Justice was never released. The team briefly explored making the project in 1991 but abandoned the idea as the technology for it simply did not exist at the time. The project was only in development for about two weeks. A return to the Quake concept was raised by John Romero in a meeting in late 1994, when discussing the next engine and main project after the completion of Doom II. Newer members of the team, including American McGee and Sandy Petersen, had not been present for the original D&D campaign or game project, but were on board with the idea after it was explained to them, and the team was then in agreement about the broad direction of the title. In a December 1, 1994, post to an online bulletin board, John Romero wrote, "Okay, people. It seems that everyone is speculating on whether Quake is going to be a slow, RPG-style light-action game. Wrong! What does id do best and dominate at? Can you say "action"? I knew you could. Quake will be constant, hectic action throughout – probably more so than Doom". The team entered into an R&D phase while Carmack was working on the engine. By 1995, the outline for the game included a medieval setting, hand-to-hand combat, thrown weapons, an area of effect attack with the hammer, and feeding souls to the Hellgate Cube. Some early information on Quake was released publicly, focusing on a Thor-like character who wields a giant hammer. A close up of Quake holding his hammer was on the cover of PC Gamer for the October 1995 issue, and screenshots showed medieval environments and a dragon. Romero revealed in 2023 that the dragon model was never actually implemented, and had simply been placed in the sky for the screenshot. The plan was for the game to have more role-playing-style elements. An Aztec-style texture set was developed for the project, but was not used due to artistic opposition from American McGee, who preferred a more heavy metal themed look for his levels. This texture set was reused in episode three for the map Vaults of Zin. Before gameplay could be worked on in earnest, Carmack would need to build the game engine, which was a significant undertaking, and took much longer than anticipated. Carmack was not only developing a fully 3D engine, but also a TCP/IP networking model. Carmack later said that he should have done two separate projects which developed those things the networking model first, used for a game which was otherwise in the Doom II engine, and then the 3D overhaul for a second title. The Quake engine popularized several major advances in the genre: polygonal models instead of prerendered sprites; full 3D level design instead of a 2.5D map; prerendered lightmaps; and allowing end users to partially program the game (in this case with QuakeC), which popularized fan-created modifications (mods) in both gaming in general and Quake itself. Working with a game engine that was still in development presented difficulties for the designers. Around fifty levels were developed during the R&D process, but engine changes meant that the team was frequently having to redo work. Much of this needed to be scrapped by the time the engine was completed in late 1995. The team was burned out from the process, and raised the idea of using the existing demo levels for a first person shooter, as it would be faster and less risky. Romero opposed the change, but relented. The creative differences would ultimately lead to his departure from the company after completing Quake. Initially, maps were created haphazardly without a specific organization or order. As development progressed, id Software's employees could not agree on one, unifying theme to use throughout. Instead, it was decided that each designer would specialize and concentrate on their individual artistic concepts, designing episodes isolated from each other. Still, Romero had the desire to link each episode together. Unlike in Doom, where each episode's story was very loosely connected, Romero's solution was to begin each episode with a military base from which the player magically teleported to their respective dimension. As the four episodes of Quake were each designed separately, each exhibits that designer's particular vision. These themes come through in their texture sets, key designs, architecture, layout, and enemy variety. However, Episode one, the Dimension of the Doomed, features level themes from multiple designers; being the only free episode, id Software wanted to give potential buyers a wide sample of what the later, paid episodes had to offer. Episode two, the Realm of Black Magic, chiefly features a medieval theme with knights, castles, and stained glass windows. Episode three, the Netherworld, has a more "runic" theme, with metallic construction and lava instead of water or slime. The last episode, the Elder World, was made to be the most difficult, employing the game's hardest enemies often; it was designed to be a hostile world with abstract, foreign geometry instead of identifiable structures and objects with a clear function. Quake was programmed by John Carmack, Michael Abrash, and John Cash. The levels and scenarios were designed by American McGee, Sandy Petersen, John Romero, and Tim Willits, and the graphics were designed by Adrian Carmack, Kevin Cloud and Paul Steed. Cloud created the monster and player graphics using Alias. Initially, the game was designed so that when the player ran out of ammunition, the player character would hit enemies with the butt of a gun. Shortly before release this was replaced with an axe. id Software released QTest on February 24, 1996, a technology demo limited to three multiplayer maps. There was no single-player support and some of the gameplay and graphics were unfinished or different from their final versions. QTest gave gamers their first peek into the filesystem and modifiability of the Quake engine, and many entity mods (that placed monsters in the otherwise empty multiplayer maps) and custom player skins began appearing online before the full game was even released. Morale on the project was low, and developers were under crunch from December 1995 through to release in June 1996. Romero has described the process as one of the hardest grinds of his career. He was the only member of the team to attend the office on launch day to upload the files.

• Illustration — Trent Reznor composed the music of Quake along with his band Nine Inch Nails, and also provided the voice for Ranger, the playable character • Illustration — American McGee at id in October 1995, with a Nine Inch Nails shirt Quakes music and sound design was done by Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, using ambient soundscapes and synthesized drones to create atmospheric tracks. In an interview, Reznor remarked that the Quake soundtrack "is not music[;] it's textures and ambiences and whirling machine noises and stuff. We tried to make the most sinister, depressive, scary, frightening kind of thing... It's been fun." The game includes an homage to Reznor in the form of ammo boxes of nails for the Nailgun and Super Nailgun decorated with the Nine Inch Nails logo. The idea to use Nine Inch Nails for the soundtrack was raised by American McGee, who had been listening to their album The Downward Spiral during his work on the game. Romero was initially skeptical as he had envisioned a more ambient tone, but was open to the idea of the band composing with that tone in mind. id approached the band's agents, and the group had agreed to do the soundtrack by the following day as they were Doom fans and excited by the project. McGee handled the delivery of the soundtrack from there on. A legal issue that rose late in development with the record company meant that the code to play the audio from the CD was among the final changes made before release. Some digital re-releases of the game lack the CD soundtrack that came with the original shareware release. The 2021 enhanced version includes the soundtrack. The Quake official soundtrack garnered favorable reviews, with many critics noting how effectively the music enhances the game's immersive mood. In his 1996 evaluation of the game for GameSpot, Trent Ward stated, "Simply put, this is the greatest soundtrack ever produced for a PC game." Ward further explained that the chilling audio elements and disturbing ambient effects amplify the title's already intense and suspenseful environment. Major Mike of GamePro commented that "With heavy, driving guitar riffs and eerie, subtle synthesizers, the soundtrack complements each stage flawlessly and significantly strengthens the overall mood." Writing for Destructoid, Peter Glagowski remarked, "Not only did it illustrate that the industry was progressing beyond a strictly child-oriented audience, but it also intensified the gameplay's action dramatically."

VQuake In late 1996, id Software released VQuake, a source port of the Quake engine to support hardware accelerated rendering on graphics cards using the Rendition Vérité chipset. Aside from the expected benefit of improved performance, VQuake offered numerous visual improvements over the original software-rendered Quake. It boasted full 16-bit color, bilinear filtering (reducing pixelation), improved dynamic lighting, optional anti-aliasing, and improved source code clarity, as the improved performance finally allowed the use of gotos to be abandoned in favor of proper loop constructs. As the name implied, VQuake was a proprietary source port specifically for the Vérité; consumer 3D acceleration was in its infancy at the time, and there was no standard 3D API for the consumer market. After completing VQuake, John Carmack vowed to never write a proprietary port again, citing his frustration with Rendition's Speedy3D API. QuakeWorld To improve the quality of online play, id Software released QuakeWorld in December 1996, a build of the Quake engine that featured significantly revamped network code including the addition of client-side prediction. The original Quake network code would not show the player the results of their actions until the server sent back a reply acknowledging them. For example, if the player attempted to move forward, the client would send the request to move forward to the server, and the server would determine whether the client was actually able to move forward or if it ran into an obstacle, such as a wall or another player. The server would then respond to the client, and only then would the client display movement to the player. This was fine for play on a LAN, a high bandwidth, very low latency connection, but the latency over a dial-up Internet connection is much larger than on a LAN, and this caused a noticeable delay between when a player tried to act and when that action was visible on the screen. This made gameplay much more difficult, especially since the unpredictable nature of the Internet made the amount of delay vary from moment to moment. Players would experience jerky, laggy motion that sometimes felt like ice skating, where they would slide around with seemingly no ability to stop, due to a build-up of previously sent movement requests. John Carmack has admitted that this was a serious problem that should have been fixed before release, but it was not caught because he and other developers had high-speed Internet access at home. After months of private beta testing, QuakeWorld, written by John Carmack with help from John Cash and Christian Antkow, was released on December 13, 1996. The client portion followed on December 17. Official id Software development stopped with the test release of QuakeWorld 2.33 on December 21, 1998. The last official stable release was 2.30. QuakeWorld has been described by IGN as the first popular first-person shooter meant to be played online. With the help of client-side prediction, which allowed players to see their own movement immediately without waiting for a response from the server, QuakeWorld's network code allowed players with high-latency connections to control their character's movement almost as precisely as when playing in single-player mode. The Netcode parameters could be adjusted by the user so that QuakeWorld performed well for users with high and low latency. The trade off to client-side prediction was that sometimes other players or objects would no longer be quite where they had appeared to be, or, in extreme cases, that the player would be pulled back to a previous position when the client received a late reply from the server which overrode movement the client had already previewed; this was known as "warping". As a result, some serious players, particularly in the U.S., still preferred to play online using the original Quake engine (commonly called NetQuake) rather than QuakeWorld. However, the majority of players, especially those on dial-up connections, preferred the newer network model, and QuakeWorld soon became the dominant form of online play. Following the success of QuakeWorld, client-side prediction has become a standard feature of nearly all real-time online games. As with all other Quake upgrades, QuakeWorld was released as a free, unsupported add-on to the game and was updated numerous times through 1998. In January 1997 an independent developer, Nick Maher, developed a version of the Quake World master server (called QuakeWorld Local) that could be run on a LAN without an Internet connection. The software tracked player statistics over time and allowed international players without a QuakeWorld server on their continent, or without Internet access at all, to enjoy the new client. GLQuake On January 22, 1997, id Software released the first beta of GLQuake. This was designed to use the OpenGL 3D API to access hardware 3D graphics acceleration cards to rasterize the graphics, rather than having the computer's CPU fill in every pixel. In addition to higher framerates for most players, GLQuake provided higher resolution modes and texture filtering. GLQuake also experimented with reflections, transparent water, and even rudimentary shadows. GLQuake came with a driver enabling the subset of OpenGL used by the game to function on the 3dfx Voodoo Graphics card, the only consumer-level card at the time capable of running GLQuake well. Previously, John Carmack had experimented with a version of Quake specifically written for the Rendition Vérité chip used in the Creative Labs PCI 3D Blaster card. This version had met with only limited success, and Carmack decided to write for generic APIs in the future rather than tailoring for specific hardware. WinQuake On March 11, 1997, id Software released WinQuake, a version of the non-OpenGL engine designed to run under Microsoft Windows; the original Quake had been written for MS-DOS, allowing for launch from Windows 95, but could not run under Windows NT-based operating systems because it needed direct access to hardware. WinQuake instead accessed hardware via Win32-based APIs such as DirectSound, DirectInput, and DirectDraw that were supported on Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 and later releases. Like GLQuake, WinQuake also allowed higher resolution video modes. This removed the last barrier to widespread popularity of the game. VKQuake On July 20, 2016, Axel Gneiting, an id Tech employee responsible for implementing the Vulkan rendering path to the id Tech 6 engine used in Doom (2016), released a source port called vkQuake under the GPLv2.

Shortly after Quake release, official expansions were developed which included new campaigns with new levels, enemies, and soundtracks. These expansions were developed relatively quickly because of the engine's modularity and ability to be extended upon. These first expansions were called "mission packs" (MP).

Scourge of Armagon The first expansion, Quake Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon, was developed by Hipnotic Interactive (now Ritual Entertainment) and was released on March 5, 1997. It featured 3 new episodes with 15 levels, additional enemy types, new weapons (Mjolnir, laser cannon, proximity bomb), and a soundtrack composed by Jeehun Hwang. Computer Gaming World rated the pack 8.90/10, saying that "the levels were better in ARMAGON than in QUAKE, and the DeathMatch level was arguably the best we have ever seen". Dissolution of Eternity The second expansion, Quake Mission Pack 2: Dissolution of Eternity, was developed by Rogue Entertainment. It was released on March 19, 1997, just two weeks after the first mission pack. The campaign is divided into only 2 episodes with 16 levels in total: Hell's Fortress and The Corridors of Time the first applies Quake wizard and runic themes, while the second uses a new Egyptian theme. It contains 7 new usual enemies, 7 bosses, and 4 additional weapons. The soundtrack was also composed by Jeehun Hwang. Computer Gaming World rated the pack slightly higher than MP1, giving it at 8.95/10.

Dimension of the Past After the first two official mission packs, additional content for Quake dwindled as development focus shifted to the newer Quake II. However, following Quake's 20 year anniversary, the expansion Dimension of the Past was released, developed by MachineGames. It was released for free on June 24, 2016 with relatively little marketing or critical attention. The expansion titles itself as the game's fifth episode, and later packs are presented as subsequent episodes as well. Later packs would also continue to be free. Dimension of the Machine Following Bethesda's enhanced re-release of Quake, a fourth expansion was published alongside it. Dimension of the Machine was released on August 19, 2021, also developed by MachineGames. In this sixth episode, Ranger seeks out runes from 5 new worlds in order to power a machine to stop Chthon. Dawn of the Machine In 2026, that year's QuakeCon was held and celebrated Quake 30 year anniversary. To commemorate, MachineGames and id released the fifth expansion and thus seventh episode, Dawn of the Machine, on August 6, 2026. It features 19 levels, and new gameplay elements not present in the original game. The player can discover secrets and upgrades, which may give upgraded weapons, or increase Ranger's ammo carrying capacity or maximum health. The expansion features a replayable map system, wherein after obtaining the first rune, players return to a hub world that can access every level. To collect the remaining runes, previous levels must be revisited to open new sections. New enemy types appear, such as dogs with grenades strapped on their backs, ogres with rocket launchers, and a "Blood Shambler". A difficulty above Nightmare is also secretly present, known as "Bloody Nightmare". This expansion also notably integrates a more cohesive story and plot than Quake expansions previously have, as Ranger is now trapped in a illusory dimension where he's been "reliving the same violent cycles for what feels like lifetimes". Dawn of the Machine received very positive reception for its gameplay loop, detail, and plot. Digital Foundry's William Judd wrote that it's "a masterclass in balance too, successfully capturing the essence of classic Quake while simultaneously showcasing the immense power and flexibility available to modern mappers."

According to David Kushner in Masters of Doom, id Software released a retail shareware version of Quake before the game's full retail distribution by GT Interactive. These shareware copies could be converted into complete versions through passwords purchased via phone. However, Kushner wrote that "gamers wasted no time hacking the shareware to unlock the full version of the game for free." This problem, combined with the scale of the operation, led id Software to cancel the plan. As a result, the company was left with 150,000 unsold shareware copies in storage. The venture damaged Quakes initial sales and caused its retail push by GT Interactive to miss the holiday shopping season. Following the game's full release, Kushner remarked that its early "sales were good — with 250,000 units shipped — but not a phenomenon like Doom II." In the United States, Quake placed sixth on PC Data's monthly computer game sales charts for November and December 1996. Its shareware edition was the sixth-best-selling computer game of 1996 overall, while its retail SKU claimed 20th place. The shareware version sold 393,575 copies and grossed $3,005,519 (~$ in) in the United States during 1996. It remained in PC Data's monthly top 10 from January to April 1997, but was absent by May. During its first 12 months, Quake sold 373,000 retail copies and earned $18 million in the United States, according to PC Data. Its final retail sales for 1997 were 273,936 copies, which made it the country's 16th-highest computer game seller for the year. In 1997, id estimated that there may be as many as 5 million copies of Quake circulating. The game sold over 1.4 million copies by December 1997. Sales of Quake reached 550,000 units in the United States alone by December 1999.

Nintendo Life gave the Switch version a rave review, saying it "wisely avoids tinkering with the magic formula that made the game so great in the first place, instead keeping the look and feel of the original intact whilst carefully adding all manner of modern bells and whistles in a feature-packed port that's an absolute dream to spend time with." They particularly praised the level designs, puzzle elements, atmospheric game world, and numerous configuration options for the graphical upgrades and multiplayer sessions. They argued that the smooth performance in both docked and handheld mode and ability to play the game as portable makes the Switch version the definitive version of the game.

After the departure of Sandy Petersen, the remaining id employees chose to change the thematic direction substantially for Quake II, making the design more technological and futuristic, rather than maintaining the focus on Lovecraftian horror. Quake 4 followed the design themes of Quake II, whereas Quake III Arena mixed these styles; it had a parallel setting that housed several "id all-stars" from various games as playable characters. The mixed settings occurred because Quake II originally began as a separate product line. The id designers fell back on the project's nickname of "Quake II" because the game's fast-paced, tactile feel felt closer to a Quake game than a new franchise. Since any sequel to the original Quake had already been vetoed, it became a way of continuing the series without continuing the storyline or setting of the first game. In June 2011, John Carmack made an offhand comment that id Software was considering going back to the "...mixed up Cthulhu-ish Quake 1 world and rebooting [in] that direction." Since 2016, more episodes have been released for Quake in the form of free DLC.

Quake drew criticism for its intense graphic violence, including detailed blood effects, gore, and enemy dismemberment, building on the debates sparked by id Software's earlier game Doom. Though the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), established in 1994, rated Quake "Mature" for players 17 and older, the game remained part of broader 1990s concerns about video game violence and its potential effects on young players. The controversy surrounding Quake and similar titles intensified after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, where reports noted that the perpetrators were fans of id Software games, including Quake II and Doom. This led to renewed media scrutiny and political calls for regulation of violent video games, with critics arguing that such titles could desensitize players to real-world violence or contribute to aggression. In response to the backlash, id Software co-founder John Carmack emphasized that the company focused on creating games they personally enjoyed, stating, "We make the games we like to play and throw them out into the world... We don't get involved in politics". Defenders within the industry and among players argued that no direct causal link existed between game violence and real-world behavior, viewing the graphic elements as secondary to the technological innovation and immersive gameplay. The release of Quake marks the end of the classic line-up at id Software. Due to conflicts and burnout, the majority of the staff resigned from id after the game's release including Romero, Abrash, Shawn Green, Jay Wilbur, Petersen and Mike Wilson. Petersen claimed in July 2021 that the lack of a team leader was the cause of it all. He volunteered to take lead as he had five years of experience as project manager in MicroProse, but he was turned down by Carmack. Romero has discussed their relative lack of experience at the time and failure to communicate with one another, and has stated that there is no long-lasting animosity between the staff. Even though he led the project, Romero did not receive any money from Quake. In 2000, Romero released Daikatana, the game that he envisioned Quake being, and despite its shaky development, and being considered one of the worst games of all time, he said Daikatana was "more fun to make than Quake" due to the lack of creative interference.

Quake was critically acclaimed on the PC. Aggregating review websites GameRankings and Metacritic gave the original PC version 93% and 94/100, and the Nintendo 64 port 76% and 74/100. A Next Generation critic lauded the game's realistic 3D physics and genuinely unnerving sound effects. GamePro said Quake had been over-hyped but is excellent nonetheless, particularly its usage of its advanced 3D engine. The review also praised the sound effects, atmospheric music, and graphics, though it criticized that the polygons used to construct the enemies are too obvious at close range. Less than a month after Quake was released (and a month before they actually reviewed the game), Next Generation listed it as number 9 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", saying that it is similar to Doom but supports a maximum of eight players instead of four. In 1996, Computer Gaming World declared Quake the 36th-best computer game ever released, and listed "telefragged" as #1 on its list of "the 15 best ways to die in computer gaming". In 1997, the Game Developers Choice Awards gave Quake three spotlight awards for Best Sound Effects, Best Music or Soundtrack and Best On-Line/Internet Game. Entertainment Weekly gave the game a B+ and called it "an extended bit of subterranean mayhem that offers three major improvements over its immediate predecessor [Doom]." He identified these as the graphics, the audio design, and the amount of violent action. Next Generation reviewed the Macintosh version of the game, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "Though replay value is limited by the lack of interactive environments or even the semblance of a plot, there's no doubt that Quake and its engine are something powerful and addictive." The Saturn version received mostly negative reviews, as critics generally agreed that it did not bring over the elements that make the game enjoyable. In particular, critics reviled the absence of the multiplayer mode, which they felt had eclipsed the single player campaign as the reason to play Quake. Kraig Kujawa wrote in Electronic Gaming Monthly, "Quake is not a great one-player game – it gained its notoriety on the Net as a multiplayer." and his co-reviewer Sushi-X concluded "Without multiplayer, I'd pass." Most reviews also said the controls are much worse than the PC original, in particular the difficulty of aiming at enemies without the benefit of either mouse-controlled camera or a second thumb stick. GamePro noted that the graphics are very pixelated and blurry, to the point where people unfamiliar with Quake would not be able to discern what they're looking at. They concluded, "Quake may not be the worst Saturn game available, but it certainly doesn't live up to its PC heritage." Most critics did find the port technically impressive, particularly the added light sourcing. However, Next Generation pointed out that "Porting Quake to a console is nothing more than an excuse for bragging rights. It's simply a way to show that the limited architecture of a 32-bit system has the power to push the same game that those mighty Pentium PCs take for granted." Even Rich Leadbetter of Sega Saturn Magazine, which gave the port a 92%, acknowledged that it was a proverbial dancing bear, noting several conspicuous compromises the port made and stating as his concluding argument, "Look, it's Quake on the Saturn – the machine has no right to be doing this!" GameSpot opined that the game's lack of plot makes the single-player campaign feel too shallow and lacking in motivation to appeal to most gamers. Most critics compared the port unfavorably to the Saturn version of Duke Nukem 3D (which came out just a few months earlier), mainly in terms of gameplay. Reviews for the Nintendo 64 version praised its lighting effects and smooth frame rate in single-player mode. IGN added the caveats that the environments are simplified from the PC version and the pre-rendered light sourcing is less impressive than the real-time light sourcing of the Saturn version, but judged the visuals overall to be superior to those of the unaccelerated PC version. GamePro went so far as to say the graphics are as clean as those of GLQuake, while Next Generation was more moderate, concluding that "As a whole, Quake 64 doesn't live up to the experience offered by the high-end, 3D-accelerated PC version; it is, however, an entertaining gaming experience that is worthy of a close look and a nice addition to the blossoming number of first-person shooters for Nintendo 64." Most reviews found fault with the multiplayer, stating that the frame rate takes a hit in this mode, some of the levels are too large with only two players present, and the game should have supported four players, as previous Nintendo 64 shooters Hexen: Beyond Heretic and GoldenEye 007 did. However, Next Generation pointed out that on the Nintendo 64, Quake with four players would inevitably have meant a severely compromised frame rate and small view screen. GameSpot also felt the multiplayer was fun despite its limitations, and noted that setting up a deathmatch was quicker and easier on the Nintendo 64 than on PC. Reviewers sharply differed over the controls, with Electronic Gaming Monthly, IGN, and GamePro all describing them as precise, responsive, and intuitive, while GameSpot and Next Generation complained that finding the right control required fiddling with the settings and even at best felt lacking compared to a keyboard-and-mouse setup. Reviews generally concluded that while the Nintendo 64 version would not appeal to Quake veterans due to its multiplayer shortcomings and lack of exclusive content, it was a strong enough conversion for non-PC gamers to enjoy the Quake experience. Next Generation reviewed the arcade version of the game, rating it three stars out of five, and stated that "For those who don't have LAN or internet capabilities, check out arcade Quake. It's a blast." In 1998, PC Gamer declared it the 28th-best computer game ever released, and the editors called it "one of the most addictive, adaptable, and pulse-pounding 3D shooters ever created". In 2003, Quake was inducted into GameSpot's list of the greatest games of all time.

The source code of Quake was released on December 22, 1999. The id Software maps, objects, textures, sounds, and other creative works remain under their original proprietary license. The shareware distribution of Quake is still freely redistributable and usable with the GPLed engine code. One must purchase a copy of Quake in order to receive the registered version of the game which includes more single-player episodes and the deathmatch maps. Based on the success of the first Quake game, Quake II, Quake III Arena, and Quake 4 were published, with Quake 4 being developed by Raven Software using the id Tech 4 engine from Doom 3. Quake was the game primarily responsible for the emergence of the machinima artform of films made in game engines, thanks to edited Quake demos such as Ranger Gone Bad and Blahbalicious, the in-game film The Devil's Covenant, and the in-game-rendered, four-hour epic film The Seal of Nehahra. On June 22, 2006, it had been ten years since the original uploading of the game to cdrom.com archives. Many Internet forums had topics about it, and it was a front-page story on Slashdot. On October 11, 2006, John Romero released the original map files for all of the levels in Quake. Quake has four sequels: Quake II, Quake III Arena, Quake 4, and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. In 2002, a version of Quake was produced for mobile phones. A copy of Quake was also released as a compilation in 2001, labeled Ultimate Quake, which included the original Quake, Quake II, and Quake III Arena which was published by Activision. In 2008, Quake was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for advancing the art form of user modifiable games. John Carmack accepted the award. Years after its original release, Quake is still regarded by many critics as one of the greatest and most influential games ever made. In 2025, The Strong National Museum of Play inducted Quake into its World Video Game Hall of Fame. Co-creator of Quake, John Romero, attended the induction ceremony. Lindsey Kurano of The Strong Museum said "Quake's legacy lives on in its atmospheric single player campaign, its influence in how online games are played, its active modding community, and its creation and shaping of esports." As an example of the dedication that Quake has inspired in its fan community, a group of expert players recorded speedrun demos (replayable recordings of the player's movement) of Quake levels completed in record time on the "Nightmare" skill level. The footage was edited into a continuous 19 minutes, 49 seconds demo called Quake done Quick and released on June 10, 1997. Owners of Quake could replay this demo in the game engine, watching the run unfold as if they were playing it themselves. Most full-game speedruns are a collaborative effort by a number of runners (though some have been done by single runners on their own). Although each particular level is credited to one runner, the ideas and techniques used are iterative and collaborative in nature, with each runner picking up tips and ideas from the others, so that speeds keep improving beyond what was thought possible as the runs are further optimized and new tricks or routes are discovered. Further time improvements of the continuous whole game run were achieved into the 21st century. In addition, many thousands of individual level runs are kept at Speed Demos Archive's Quake section, including many on custom maps. Speedrunning is a counterpart to multiplayer modes in making Quake one of the first games promoted as a virtual sport.