With no fewer than three OS X versions available, id Software’s best-selling game Quake may be old by computer game standards (the original PC version was released in 1996, and the Mac version a year later), but it is far from being retired. At its simplest, Quake is a first-person virtual reality action game, where the player takes on the role of a lone marine fighting the forces of evil by basically killing anything that moves. So far, so similar to id Software’s previous foray into the genre, Doom, released in 1993. But what makes Quake different is that the player finds himself in a three dimensional environment where light, shadow and sound all work together to create a rich, if violent and hazardous, world. Heightening this effect is the music that accompanied the game composed by Trent Reznor and performed by Nine Inch Nails: by turns gothic and industrial, but always dark and brooding. For those with an eye to design, the style of the interface and the packaging of the game are equally compelling. The box looks weathered and the logo corroded, there’s an imaginative use of fonts and feedback sounds that give the program a very menacing feel, building up the sense of foreboding even before you meet your first monster.

The final battle in the original Quake game, your meeting with Shub-Niggurath and her servants, including the lightning wielding shambler.

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