Slipping into the hot seat next we have Ronan Condon, AKA Zero from na Daghda, who I first played two years ago next month on the Guns Island server. So Zero, what’s it like to be in semi-retirement? Miss the old school players and all that (I haven’t played Quake in over a month!)?

Well, originally when we got Quake it was all for fun, and jesus we had some great crack. We had just got our first Pentiums in the house, and five of us in the house (me, Krusty, Tsunami, Sideshow and Gunner) played it mad, always just trying to beat each other. Wasn’t long before we topped UL and that’s why we ventured onto the net. Two and half years of Quake memories is a long time, back around Quakelords etc., we were fulltime players and all but, yeah, I miss the crack of the Fi-CT-GI rivalry and the days of muppet Quake where we all FFA-ed on IOL’s Vanilla Quake server, and played BB-Spud and SPG-Bobby2 on Ztea. Now it’s all too serious, back then there was no IRC wars, no politics, no ripping into each other on wwwboards (:P), just fun and frags.

You were the first coach for the Hibernians, who would you pick out of the current set of Irish Quake players for your ideal team against France?

Ideal team…..well as we all know, it’s a bitch picking 4 out of so many to play. The team is as good as we can have, I think. If Overlord came out of sleep/study and played again like before, he would be a definite on the team, Jay is another mental player, not tryin to polish up nD here, but those two are two class players. Others that would definitely be in there for the team would be Slaanesh and Mickah.

What are your hopes for Quake 3? So far it’s looking good for all us Quake 1 diehards, but will we have to meet the Quake 2 players on common ground?

Hmm….I dunno, the Q3 avi looked kewl, but I think it will be a Quake2 players game, I don’t think another game will capture the part of Q1 that gives us all enough of a buzz to play it for 2+ years. But you never know, I mean Q1 is getting a bit boring, the highlight of it these days is a big row on the wwwboard. Starcraft is a game that I am beginning to love, Me Beast Jay and Omar play a big mosh at least once a day. But I am hopeful that Q3 will pull us all together, it would be great to have another Quake.

How many UL Quake players does it take to kill one player from CT?

Hahaha. One. Overlord.

Who do you think will win season two of the IQCL (now that GI are out of it, haha!)? What are your favourite league levels, what makes a good war level, and would you be interested in creating a level yourself?

CW will win it. I don’t like to jump on the ” lets-worship-CW ” bandwagon, but lets face it, they are the best by far. They have the discipline, the skill and the camaraderie that no other Irish clan possesses, and are the type of team I would love to be a part of.

My favourite levels for wars would be Androm9(take it, CT), E4M3, UK2, and I’m even begining to like DM3 and E1M2.

As regards making a level, I have suddenly taken a big interest in it, and after these exams tomorrow, i.e. after the massive hangover I will have, I intend designing one, probably get Omar to build it, he’s a genius at Worldcraft. Jay made a level way back in his spare time, and looking back over it, I pointed out a few changes that might make it a good war level, so he’s trying that and it should be out by next week. My own level will definitely be on the cards soon though.

Who’s your Quake hero (/me slips a fiver under the table, I hear those Tipperary lads can be bought cheap…) and why?

Beast would come very close, being by FAR the best we have in Ireland at the moment, but my Quake hero has to be Overlord aka [Spice]Scary. The lad is a natural Quaker, comes back after months and NUKES everything he sees, plays with a natural skill I can’t grasp. He is the King, and should have won Quakelords, he was the one thing I was afraid of in Quake for so long.

Do Irish Quake players waste too much time chatting on IRC and the boards?

Definitely, IRC more than the boards. The board is one of the single best things ever introduced to Irish Quake, (/me pats John on back), it is somewhere that you can have your say and know that everyone will hear. Sure, there are some muppet threads, but they will be no more once the board admins are sorted out.

IRC on the other hand, is way overused. I think as regards Quakers, it should only be used for organisation of matches etc., not something where ppl sit all night talkin shite to each other, getting in rows which in turn get carried to servers, and from there to the boards. It’s something we don’t need.

What’s your favourite Quake demo, clan, duel or otherwise?

Well the one I watch most is a demo of Fianna and GI on E2M1, “Fianna Stronghold” I believe you christened it :). It is half of a war that you actually won, but we won that level well. Just looking back at it, it’s class seeing all the old names that would mean nothing to most Quakers today, [FI]Qwerty and [FI]Fischbach, I love watching it because it’s a war with NO tactics other than common sense in each player, no proxies, no teamtalk, teamplay 1, and to top it off 6 of the 8 players were on keys (all 4 of the Fianna). It’s just class, and if anyone is bored enough to watch it, its up at http://136.201.1.4/demos

(e2m1, e2m1, I hatessss you forever.)

Where’d you get your Quake alias from anyway, isn’t “Zero” a bit of an underachiever’s name, gives newbie opponents a false impression I guess (Cloud-Warrior changes his name to Axe_Me)?

Heh. My first game of Quake ever, I was on Gunners machine with Krusty, we hadn’t machines at the time, and I said ‘what will we call ourselves?’ coz there were loads of weird names on the LAN playing. So we stopped for a second, and on the radio the ever-cool song ‘Zero’ by smashing pumpkins was on, so we used that. When I got my own machine, I just carried on with the name, as Krusty had obviously started calling himself Krusty

Was winning QuakeLords _the_ Quake highlight for you or was it something else?

I suppose yeah it was. At the time, it was THE thing to win, and my name was made after that. Thinking about it now, it was at that point that I started my downhill slope to where I am today. What I mean is, I started off Quake just trying to beat my mates, then I wanted to win all LAN games in UL. Then me n krusty hit the net, and played like mad until we were of a pretty high status. When Quakelords was mentioned first, that was just it for me, the final prize if you know what I mean. I had started at the bottom, and if I won Quakelords it would mean I made it to the top. So after winning that, I kinda had nothing to prove, other ppl still strived to get better and better and passed me out, while I was content to slow down and just play for leisure. I might start playin again heavily if I find myself with more time on my hands, it would be good to be up there in the top 5 again.

Thank-you Zero, in your specialist subject, “The State of Quake in Ireland Today”, you scored 10 frags, I mean points. Be good

heh, thanx John, hope we can carry the nD-GI hate into Q3 too