Quake

Quake was an earthquake in 1996, and the name was the program. After Doom, which still worked with flat sprite enemies in a only apparently three-dimensional world, Quake was the first big shooter with a true 3D engine: fully polygonal enemies, free look up and down, real rooms stacked above and below each other. Gaming never looked the same again.

The atmosphere is unmistakable to this day. Dark castles, Lovecraftian creatures, blood-red rune symbols and an industrial, menacing soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails. You fight through twisting levels full of secret passages, traps and monsters, collect weapons and hunt for the exit - classic id Software level design in its purest form.

The arsenal is cult: from the shotgun through the nailgun to the infamous rocket and lightning combo. So-called rocket jumping, where you catapult yourself upward with a rocket under your feet, was born in Quake and shapes shooters to this day. Fast, brutal, precise - Quake rewards reflexes and knowledge of the terrain.

You play with the classic mouse-and-keyboard combination. You move with WASD and aim with the mouse. Clicking into the game window captures the mouse so you can look around freely without the cursor running off. Press Escape to release the mouse again. This is exactly the control scheme that defined the modern shooter.

This version runs as a browser port of the Quake engine, which is licensed under the GPL-2.0, with the freely distributable shareware episode. Click Play, the game loads, and you stand in the first episode - no download, no installation, no account. Just the classic, as raw and fast as it was in 1996.

A fullscreen mode blows the action up to the whole area when you want to dive right in. Everything runs in your browser, nothing is installed and nothing is permanently stored. Remember: once the mouse is captured, press Escape to get your cursor back.