To many, id Software are known primarily as the originators of Quake, possibly the most influential 3-d action game of all time. But id also produced a number of ground-breaking games long before people started playing Quake, and its successor, Quake II, on-line.

Vintage games such as the 2-d Commander Keen from id / Apogee were all the rage on the EGA 286s and 386s of old. In Keen, you play an eight-year old kid called Billy Blaze, defender of the Earth against the Vorticon invasion. The quality of graphics increased dramatically from the original ‘Invasion of the Vorticons’ (1990) to the sixth installment, ‘Aliens Ate My Babysitter’. This shot is from the fourth Keen, ‘Goodbye Galaxy’ (1991).

id made a giant leap in gaming with the release of “Wolfenstein 3-D” in 1992. Despite the fact that all player movement was in two dimensions, the 3-d feel of the game enthralled game players all over the world (even in Germany where it is still banned due to the content). In this game, you play B.J. Blazkowicz, an American spy sent to infiltrate the evil Nazi empire. The size of the guns (and enemies!) you find along the way increases as you progress from level to level, and if you’re lucky enough, there is a secret level where you can meet an old friend, Keen himself!

Another breakthrough came in 1993 with the release of another famous game from id, Doom. The first game to make use of “texture mapping”, whereby pre-drawn art is mapped onto the surfaces of a room, Doom had an authentic 3-d feel due to the presence of variable height ceilings and floor levels (unlike the fixed height rooms of Wolf). Carrying on the Wolf tradition, some of the Wolf enemy soldiers appear in a Doom secret level.

But the most novel part of Doom was the multiplayer aspect whereby four players on a PC LAN could engage in a “deathmatch” game and accumulate “frags” against each other. The success of Doom was to be carried on by its successor, Doom II, in 1994.

This multiplayer function was brought to a whole new level with the release of Quake in 1996, and subsequently Quake II in 1998. As well as being the first true 3-d game (able to jump, look up, down, and shoot in those directions), Quake allowed players to engage in deathmatch games over the internet, up to 32 players at a time! This quickly resulted in the formation of Quake “clans”, groups of people who would play together in team games against other clans.

You can also download shareware versions of many of the games mentioned above. Get Commander Keen I, Commander Keen IV, Wolfenstein 3-D, Doom, Quake, or Quake II.