While waiting (forever?) for GOG to get these games, I've been in the mood to play Quake (singleplayer) again, and dug out some discs with the demos for Q1 and Q2. I'd forgotten how much fun they were! I sold my copies years ago and now I wish I had them back!

I found some original discs on eBay, but somehow I got the notion to look on Steam. They have a Quake "bundle" with both the original Q1 and Q2, two official expansions apiece for both games, and Q3 and Q4 (which I don't care for) all for about $29. So here's my question: can you play these games, from Steam, without being online? I know you could in the old days, but has Steam added a bunch of DRM or Steam client stuff so you have to be always online just to play the SINGLE-PLAYER ONLY version of these old games???

Is there any other legitimate location to purchase (cheaply) the original Q1 and Q2 without newly-added additional DRM or netclient stuff? Thanks.

You could just rip the necessary files out and use them in your source port of choice. You could also try to find a copy of the Ultimate Quake, which comes with Quake 1, 2, and 3, but no expansions.

Pretty sure the old quake games can be run just fine in whichever way you want after you have installed them from steam. At least that is the case with the old doom games that I own over there.

FYI, Steam versions of Quake 1 & 2 lack red book audio. Fan rips are easily available if you want to go that route.

I wouldn't bother running the original executables. Source ports are much more pleasant.


EDIT: I just double-checked, Steam WinQuake, GLQuake, and Quake 2 work in offline mode. They've apparently added a steam cloud feature in the past year or so. You may need to turn that off first in the steam client.

In Quake 1's case, just get the Steam version then take the necessary files (id1 folder, IIRC) and use them with the free Quake port of your choice. Alakazam! No more Steam necessary! This works for both the expansions too.

I use pure WinQuake, but there are a bunch of others. Darkplaces is a good one, if you want Quake to look really really pretty.

Quake II seems to be a bit harder, mostly because there aren't any obvious sourceports available, at least as far as I can tell.

Agree with this completely. I got the Quakes on Steam and if you check the relevant forums there, there is info on obtaining and using the audio tracks the Steam releases lack. I went and got those and burned them to CDs and played the games with the CDs in the drive so the soundtracks played too. If I recall correctly, there is a way to set it all up on the hard drive but I was too lazy to bother. Burning a CD was simple and worked like a charm. The games know to look there for audio.

Also, source port for the first Quake is highly recommended. I think it was called Dark Places. There is info about that on the Steam forums too. It was easy to setup and it looked really great. I had such a good time playing the game with those fixes applied to the steam version.

As for Quake 2 I am pretty sure there is a source port for that too which I'm sure would be discussed on the Steam forums as well. Personally for that one I was happy enough to just download the audio and burn it to a CD and then play it in its original glory. But it too probably benefits from a source port.

I'd recommend grabbing these from Steam without hesitation and then consulting the forums there for further info on setting them up for awesomeness! I forget now but I think I wrote a post myself documenting how to setup the audio. I go by the same name there if you happen to see it.

WinQuake brofist.

Quake 2 XP is pretty good. Berserker Quake 2 looks really nice, but you have to download a crapload of files from a Russian site because all the updates have to b applied one after another, and there are like, a dozen updates from the base install.

I use Kmquake2 (it's currently looking for new hosting I believe but links are there)

Wow, great info here! I have a couple demo CDs that came with old game mags with demos of Quake, and I set up a Q1 demo to run in DosBox. The first demo I installed didn't run well at all... but the 2nd one I found was like v1.06 and worked great and even had resolutions above 1024x768. I don't mind the lower rez and grainier textures... in fact, I almost prefer it when playing the oldies.

So if I can get the Steam versions to work at all as-is I'd be happy. Although I played the original DOOM last year with a port (Doomsday?) and it worked really well in XP, so maybe I'll end up with a source port after all. Wish Steam offered the music, though.

GOG would offer the music! :)

Yeah, you absolutely can run the Steam versions vanilla if you want. Don't be scared off by the music issue. I know it's a little bit of a pain in the ass but honestly it wasn't that bad to download it, burn it to a CD and play with a CD in the drive for the perfect vanilla experience if that is what you'd most enjoy. I would really, really encourage you though to check out the Darkplaces graphics enhancement for the first Quake. It doesn't ruin it by changing anything important. It just dresses up the graphics and lighting and looks great. But it still looks like and plays just like Quake. I think you might really like that if you give it a try. Anyway though, if you just want vanilla, it works just fine and audio isn't hard to get with it.

As for Quake 2, personally I think it's just great in it's original beauty. I guess it is all in the eye of the beholder but that game marked a significant improvement in graphics quality for its time and I think it still looks good as such. Once again though, you'd want to download the music and burn it, etc. for the complete experience.

It's possible to make Steam run the sourceports directly (I don't believe you have to be online for this). Some info here.

It includes how to set up the music too.

The one thing I don't like about Darkplaces is that it completely revamps the visuals. They generally look really amazing, but they also don't feel quite like Quake to me. Too smooth and slick. Then again, I'm one of the few people who actually likes the infamous gritty dark brown visuals of the original game. Which is why I just use straight WinQuake in software mode. No OpenGL rendering, even.

This is all you need to run Steam's ID games with enhanced DRM-Free source ports:

http://widescreengamingforum.com/article/id-super-pack-widescreen-multi-monitor-guide

Thanks for everyone's excellent feedback!

I'm not that familiar with Steam, although I've bought a few games at retail that used it (e.g. Rage) but I've never tried to install a Steam game on a 2nd PC. I'm about to buy the Magic the Gathering Duel/Planeswalkers 2012 game and I would really also like to play it on my laptop. Does anyone know if Steam games can be installed on 2 machines? or is it tied to the computer you installed it on?

I'd like to do this with Quake as well, because sometimes I play games upstairs on my laptop while watching TV. Maybe these are two separate issues for 2 different games? Thanks!