Do you remember that magical moment when you first played Quake OpenGL using a 3DFX Voodoo accelerator? Yes, the world of computer gaming had changed forever, with everything else – including real life – paling in comparison.
Well, at least until Crysis came along.
Of course, those were different times. I can recall popping the hood of my Micron gaming rig to install the massive, first-gen 3d graphics card, which barely fit inside the large custom case.
But wow, what a difference that Voodoo card made to hardcore gamers and geeks alike.
Like War Games, Quake OpenGL opened the locked doors of our minds to a wide range of possibilities we had never considered before.
Unsurprisingly, Nvidia researcher Kevin Krewell seems to have been similarly affected by his Quake OpenGL experience.
“The first serious 3D graphics card I owned was a Canopus Pure3D card with a 3DFx Voodoo accelerator I purchased back in 1997,” Krewell reminisced in an Nvidia blog post.
“The original Voodoo cards only did the 3D game – you still needed a 2D (VGA) card for regular graphics and text. I delayed getting my 3Dfx card until the Canopus card shipped because it had 6MB of RAM instead of the regular 4MB and it had S-Video output that could connect to a TV.”
According to Krewell, Tom Pabst had rated the Canopus Pure3D card the “best” for playing Quake OpenGL.
And it certainly was.
“[So], while Doom was the first game that really got me into FPS PC games, it was Quake [OpenGL] that got me involved in LAN parties, which then led to online gaming.
“Unfortunately, I came a bit late to FPS games, so in the early days of the LAN parties, I got killed pretty fast. Embracing my n00b predisposition of becoming ‘dead meat’ I made ‘Meatman’ my game handle.
“But it all started with the Voodoo card and Quake. Oh, and did I mention, I have a lot of my original game disks? Hmmm, are there still any Tribes servers around?”
Unfortunately, Kevin, I lost my original game disks long ago.
Yeah, I’m probably also out of practice, but I still may be able to hold my own during a DeathMatch or in a gory multiplayer arena.
Anyone else interested in reliving past gaming glories?
Let us know!
And thank you Nvidia, for saluting the inner geek in all of us!
