December 2019

Quake III Arena was released by id Software on December 2, 1999, and incidentally was one of the first games I ever got the day it came out. I wasn’t much of a fan of the change in direction to being an exclusively multiplayer game, and I have to say playing the early Test, Test Demo, and Demo Test builds of the game with a Pentium MMX 200 and a Voodoo 1 card were not very pleasant at the time. The map design seemed suspect, and the effort to remove the grappling hook in Capture the Flag, bunny-hopping (turbo running), and overemphasis on balance by making all the weapons weak really diminished how high of a ceiling experienced players could reach. The game was a hit, selling over approximately 500,000 copies worldwide and has been featured in many tournaments and ladders. It had an add-on called Quake III Team Arena featuring new gameplay types, maps, bots, weapons, and powerups. Its concept was widely accepted to the point id Software released more games based on it: Quake 4 (2005) (Multiplayer Only), Quake Live (2010), and Quake Champions (2018).