The Sega Saturn port of Quake was apparently the first official console port of id Software‘s classic 3D shooter. And, while it plays quite well, it looks kinda ugly.

Saturn Quake was developed by Lobotomy Software and published by Sega in 1997.

The 3D character models are probably the worst part of the game. They are super-basic, with very blocky texture-mapping, but they suit their purpose in the game. You can barely tell that an Ogre is holding a chainsaw, for example, but it certainly hurts when one is swung at you.

The display is murky and lacks contrast, but that’s just how Quake is, and the game won’t display completely full-screen either, which is disappointing. There’s localised coloured lighting, which is good, and all the sound effects are just like in the original (although some have been slightly sped-up).

The developer of Saturn Quake decided to use the engine for Exhumed (aka The SlaveDriver Engine) for the game, so all the levels had to be rebuilt from scratch to suit that. The Saturn version of Quake features four new secret levels (E1M8: Purgatorium, E2M7: Hell’s Aerie, E3M7: the Coliseum, and E4M8: Watery Grave); an exclusive hazard, the “Void”, and an exclusive unlockable, “Dank & Scuz”. The Saturn port has no multiplayer modes, so is a purely single-player experience.

Overall, Saturn Quake is okay. I enjoyed playing through some of it recently, but I think that it just made me want to play Quake in higher-fidelity, on a PC. 🙂

More: Quake on Wikipedia