It’s no exaggeration to call Quake absolutely foundational to modern gaming, alongside the likes of Mario 64. That’s part of what drives people to bring the game to any hardware capable of 3D rendering. As we established with Asterix & Obelix, the Game Boy Advance could render polygons, but it took seriously clever coding to achieve such a feat.
So, of course, someone found a way.
Randy Linden, known for, among other things, Doom’s incredible SNES port, as well as the commercially released PlayStation emulator Bleem! (which was so successful it warranted Sony throwing legal weight around) developed a Quake GBA prototype in six months, only for the console’s market to start dying out thanks to the anticipated release of what would later be revealed as the Nintendo DS.
There are two different demos created by Linden: Quake itself, and his own game Cyboid. Due to using Quake assets, the direct port of Quake remains locked away, only briefly shown below in a video by Modern Vintage Gamer, who gives fantastic technical insights into the programming side of things:
However, the second demo, Cyboid, can be played properly on either an emulator or retro handheld by anyone. Seeing as we’ve already delved deep into the impressive (and sadly canceled) Half-Life Dreamcast port, I booted up the ROM to see if Quake on GBA could’ve been an FPS worth playing. Credit to Forest of Illusion for preserving this historic piece of technical achievement.
I’m not just saying that casually either. Cyboid is absolutely an incredible piece of tech. It runs at a higher framerate than you’d expect, and is more than playable – when it hasn’t frozen in your emulator. The triggers strafe while the D-Pad handles standard movement. A and B are firing and lock-on, respectively. It works fairly well, though I couldn’t figure out the button combo for jumping.
The 3D world is beautifully rendered, with excellent fake ‘dynamic’ lighting when blasting a grenade at insectoid enemies. Those same enemies feature impressive amounts of articulated animation, though you’ll have to get fairly close to see those animations given the incredibly low resolution of the GBA. While there are multiple stages in the rom, E1M2 is by far the one that feels the most like a Quake level, with E1M3 more resembling a level out of Powerslave.
There’s one giant caveat that keeps this impressive port from being worth playing for more than a few minutes – it’s wildly imbalanced. Part of this is due to the fact that the only way to swap levels is dying and holding down a specific button to access different levels. However, choosing to always spawn the player with only enough health to survive a single hit isn’t exactly ideal. Enemies are supposed to only attack when you shoot at them, but I had a few that struck first regardless.
It’s incredible that Quake could run on a GBA. However, unless Linden decides to release the rom including Quake assets, the end product is only really worth the hassle for those who love ‘impossible’ ports. It’s a novelty for sure, but it’s as short-lived as the nameless protagonist when they incur a spider’s wrath. If you want to play Quake in a weird new way, you’re probably better off with the motion-controlled Wii port or the remaster by Machinegames. In the meantime, if you’ll excuse me, *grabs scuba gear* I’m back to plumbing the prototype depths for more of gaming’s best could’ve-beens.
