Water but said like SEGAJun 23, 2024
Anatoly Shashkin💾
Happy birthday to the Internet SHAREWARE version of Quake! 🎂🎉🍾🥂
Remember, it was only 8 maps long. To get the full game you had to order it for $45 + $5 S&H (about $100 today) and wait for it to get finished and shipped to you.
Jun 22, 2024 at 11:56pmWeb
Show threadsj_zeroJun 23, 2024
Quake was amazing, but compared to many games of the period it barely ran on anything. Doom engine and Build engine games ran like crap on a 386, but they still ran. Quake needed an FPU, so it needed at least a 486, and as I recall at least a solid 486DX.

Quake actually was the thing that got me into Linux for the first time, because I assumed the fancy new OS everyone was talking about might be able to run it where archaic MS-DOS could not. Of course today I know more about instruction sets and the like and realize how absurd that idea was, but at the time miracles were regularly happening on PCs (imagine how mind blowing something like nesticle or zsnes was!) so it felt like anything was possible.

Incidentally, that first Linux distribution I used was incredible. It lived in a dos directory and you ran a batch file it would replace the MS-DOS kernel with the Linux kernel. It was pretty DIY after that -- I don't think it had a package manager or anything so if you wanted to try to make something run you were digging.
Show threadTroldann ArothinJun 23, 2024
@dosnostalgic I loved that old ASCII installer progress bar. It feels like the dumbest thing in the world to love, but it really impressed pre-teen me for some reason.
Show threadFuchsiii~~~Jun 23, 2024
@dosnostalgic
Show threadAnatoly Shashkin💾Jun 23, 2024
@fuchsiii https://fineleatherjackets.net/monkeyinflation
Monkey Island Inflation

How much you should spend on computer games as explained by Guybrush Threepwood in 'The Secret of Monkey Island', now adjusted for inflation.

Show threadPhilippa CowderoyJun 23, 2024

@fuchsiii @dosnostalgic There weren't enough of us playing to support anything cheap-to-us back then: iD were very much the equivalent of an established-but-smallish indie studio by today's standards, albeit with a lot of ability to hire interesting people! Certainly nowhere near the size of even one of Square's SNES-era teams.

Then again, from Doom onwards their stuff tended to want what counted as seriously high-end hardware at launch. The first two Unreal games went easier on the player's hardware budget than Quake 3 (which was contemporary with UT99 and the first iD game with no software renderer).

Show threadKevin Karhan Jul 4, 2024

@fuchsiii @dosnostalgic this real?

Cuz if so I'm shure @grumpygamer sees it a lot...

Show threaduwu1baJun 23, 2024
@dosnostalgic it's fun how in Doom and Quake the best episode is the one that was distributed in shareware version.

Don't get me wrong, the other are good too, but leave less impact on player. Didn't even finished Doom episodes, but maybe I just like Quake more. :)
Show threadAnatoly Shashkin💾Jun 23, 2024
@a1ba That is a normal shareware thing. Although Quake's 4th episode is my favorite.
Show threadKrisJun 23, 2024

@dosnostalgic Or you went to a dark, shady place on IRC somewhere & traded a copy for whatever you had that others might have wanted.

I did eventually pay for Quake later on, I should point out. At the time, however, that was difficult to do on a military E2 paycheck.

Show threadAnatoly Shashkin💾Jun 23, 2024
@ashortbusvet I mean, another way was to wait for the shareware CD to appear in stores (I think in August?,) buy it for $10, and then just download a copy of QCrack (available 10/08/96,) and you were all set.
Show threadKrisJun 23, 2024
@dosnostalgic At the time my wife & I were stationed in Brunswick, Maine. Wasn't much there at the time that carried any sort of tech, much less shareware CD's.
Show threadAnatoly Shashkin💾Jun 23, 2024
@ashortbusvet What I was mainly pointing out that on June 22nd of 1996, the officially celebrated date of Quake's release, there was no way to actually play the full version of the game because it didn't exist yet.
Show threadKrisJun 23, 2024
@dosnostalgic Ah, sorry.