Video of Quake Arcade Tournament Edition, with the “Instaprize!” backpacks.
Since its PC release in 1996, id’s has been a seminal shooter Quake has been transferred to everything from flip phones and smartphones to game consoles and web browsers. But even many serious fans of the series do not know it Quake Arcade Tournament Edition (Quake ATE), an officially licensed version of the game that ran on custom arcade cabinets.
Even among those who know it, few ever got the chance to play it in the short time it was in arcades, and hardware-based DRM in the cabinet meant that the game was not playable on home emulators. That state of affairs now seems to be changing thanks to the recent release of a Windows executable that can decrypt the data from those aging arcade hard disks for playing on a modern home computer.
From PC to arcade
First released in May 1998, Quake ATE presented a custom Quicksilver PC made by a little known company called Quantum3D. That hardware – Windows 95 runs on a glowing 266MHz Pentium II with 32MB of RAM – was tucked away in an arcade cabinet with a 27-inch or 33-inch CRT monitor, seven control buttons and a trackball, all connected to the PC via a special connector called the Quantum3D Game Control Interface. Watch a few AVI videos for the attract mode (which warns players about the upcoming “ANIMATED VIOLENCE STRONG”) and some software to detect coin drops, and all of a sudden your PC shooter is an arcade game.
As shown in the video above is the single-player version of ATE plays almost identically to the well-known PC release. The main difference is that enemies sometimes drop backpacks that earn players in the game “coins” (and an announced scream “Instaprize!” When you pick them up). These coins can cause the game to issue prize redemption cards through an optional printer.
The game also included what porting company LBE Systems said “was the world’s first multi-player arcade gaming network, SparkyNET OS.” That system allows multiple boxes in one location to be connected in a deathmatch game LAN, inclusive Quake IIthe famous card “The Edge” for good measure.
A preserved rarity
In a statement issued when the game launched, id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead said Quake ATE “gives a large number Quake Players a chance to experience the excitement and excitement of playing multiplayer Quake in the arcades. But that “large number” part turned out to be a stretch, as not many arcade owners of the late ’90s were willing to shake off a cabinet based to simply offer a high-end PC. Quake to their patrons.
Quake ATE‘s On Mode.
While cabinet maker Lazer-Tron produced a limited run of specially designed cabinets for the game, Quake ATE was more often seen as a conversion kit embedded in some much funnier-purpose setup. However, even these conversions were not frequent; the International Arcade Museum ranks the game as one of the rarest in members’ collections, with only six expanded specimens to be found among the nearly 150,000 cabinets followed by nearly 9,000 collectors.
While the 225MB of game data found on those Quantum3D hard disks were dumped a long time ago, the game itself remained unplayable without a special decryption dongle included with the actual arcade hardware. Last month, however, Github user mills5 fixed that with a decryption program that ensures this historical curiosity will be preserved and playable, even without a cabinet.
Not so Quake ATE has long since been released from his arcade cabinet prison, we have to wonder what other no-emulated classics at home could soon be playable.
Image display by internet archive
