Skip to main content
PC Gamer PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES
UK EditionUK US EditionUS CA EditionCanada AU EditionAustralia
Sign in
  • View Profile
  • Sign out
  • Games
  • Hardware
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Guides
  • Video
  • Forum
  • More
    • PC Gaming Show
    • Software
    • Movies & TV
    • Codes
    • Coupons
    • Magazine
    • Newsletter
    • Affiliate links
    • Meet the team
    • Community guidelines
    • About PC Gamer
PC Gamer Magazine Subscription
PC Gamer Magazine Subscription
Why subscribe?
  • Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag
  • Try a single issue or save on a subscription
  • Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From$32.49
Subscribe now
Popular
  • Essential Hardware
  • Top 100
  • PC Gaming Show
  • Arc Raiders
  • BF6
  • Quizzes
Don't miss these
A minotaur leading a horde of enemies in Painkiller
Games Purgatory is best enjoyed with company in this vicious reimagining of Painkiller
A Strogg standing on a gantry over a river of lava.
FPS This Quake 2 mod bridges the gap between the original game and its sequel, with hybrid enemies including dog-headed parasites and rocket-blasting shamblers
Heretic + Hexen screenshot
FPS Id Software kicks off QuakeCon with a surprise release of Heretic + Hexen, an 'enhanced' bundle with cross-platform multiplayer, mod support, and more
Close up of Shodan, antagonist of System Shock 2. Feminine face with circuitry spreading over it and out into wires surrounding.
FPS Nightdive's System Shock 2 remaster now supports 26 years of mods and fan missions
A screencap of Hollow Knight: Silksong's opening cutscene. A close-up shot of protagonist Hornet moments before she breaks out of a metal cage. Her curved white mask and red cloak are lit up as a glowing strand of silk surrounds her.
Action Heroic tinkerer revives Windows 7 and gets Steam and Silksong running on it, so take that Microsoft and your constant nagging to upgrade to Win11
The DOSBox Pure logo
Games If emulating classic DOS games seems like a pain, there's a DOSBox fork 'aiming for simplicity and ease of use', now standalone for the first time
An image showing the protagonist of Heretic fending off horrible skeleton enemies
FPS After all these years, Heretic plays better than it ever has—and thanks to Nightdive, even Hexen sucks far less
Gordon Freeman illustration from wallpaper released for Half-Life's 25th anniversary rerelease.
FPS Renegade graphics warlock makes Half-Life look like Half-Life 2, then runs it on an ancient laptop, raising a middle finger to poorly optimised PC games
FPS There's a fan patch for FEAR if you want to play the classic FPS with a scalable UI, controller support, and other modern conveniences
Unreal Redux screenshot - crashed spaceship
FPS Unreal mastermind Cliff Bleszinski really likes this fan-made Redux remaster: 'Time for a new generation to learn that Unreal isn't just an engine'
Petaka freaks out against a green background.
FPS This 2025 shooter made in a decades-old Doom engine is gorgeous, fun, and tough as nails
A screenshot from Outlaws showing a tall man on a horse
FPS Outlaws is a quirky '90s wild west FPS you probably never played, so naturally it's getting the Nightdive remaster treatment later this year
Microsoft 3D Pinball
Windows Former MS engineer Dave Plummer admits he accidentally coded Pinball to run 'at like, 5,000 frames per second' on Windows NT
Wolfenstein 3D cover art showing shirtless BJ Blazkowicz firing gun in air kicking Nazi while another approaches.
FPS FPS legend John Romero says Wolfenstein 3D was the first game id Software took its time with⁠—a luxurious 4-month development instead of just 2
Serious Sam replicates the 'Big-chinned guy with hand on another guy's shoulder' meme.
FPS 2005 FPS Serious Sam 2 just got a big update for reasons known only to God
  1. Games
  2. Action
  3. Quake II

How to run Quake II on Windows 7/8

Features
By Wes Fenlon published 9 October 2014

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 1 of 28
Page 1 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 2 of 28
Page 2 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 3 of 28
Page 3 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 4 of 28
Page 4 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 5 of 28
Page 5 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 6 of 28
Page 6 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 7 of 28
Page 7 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 8 of 28
Page 8 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 9 of 28
Page 9 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 10 of 28
Page 10 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 11 of 28
Page 11 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 12 of 28
Page 12 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 13 of 28
Page 13 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 14 of 28
Page 14 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 15 of 28
Page 15 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 16 of 28
Page 16 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 17 of 28
Page 17 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 18 of 28
Page 18 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 19 of 28
Page 19 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 20 of 28
Page 20 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 21 of 28
Page 21 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 22 of 28
Page 22 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 23 of 28
Page 23 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 24 of 28
Page 24 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 25 of 28
Page 25 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 26 of 28
Page 26 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 27 of 28
Page 27 of 28
Quake II at 3840x2160

Quake II at 3840x2160

In 1996, Quake brought the first-person shooter into a fully 3D world with 3D acceleration. In 1999, Quake III Arena defined the online multiplayer shooter. Its influence is still felt today, and people are still playing it on Steam. In between those two landmark games, iD released Quake II, which added a more involved single-player campaign (with cinematics!) and native OpenGL support. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal a sequel to Quake was in 1997; as PC Gamer editor-in-chief Gary Whitta wrote in 1997, “Fourteen pages dedicated to a preview of one game? More than 70 screenshots? Have we gone insane? A few months ago we might have thought so ourselves—but that was before we saw Quake II in action for the first time.”

Quake II’s technology stuck around for years; the iD Tech 2 engine powered games like Daikatana and Anachronox, and in 2001, John Carmack made the code open source. As a result, there are tons of customized versions of Quake II out there that apply higher resolution textures, easily support modern operating systems, and can run in widescreen at high resolutions. This week’s Pixel Boost tackles one of the most popular versions of Quake II, KMQuake2, in 4K.

Install it

If you want to build your own version of Quake 2 from the source code, you can download that on Github right here. But that’s a bit more work than most of us want to put into playing a game. The easier option is to download Quake II on Steam for $10. There’s also the $30 Quake Collection that packages up the older Quake games and their expansions.

Downloading Quake II from Steam and installing it is the first step of the installation process. Step 2 is deciding how you want to run the game. You could just run vanilla Quake 2 straight from Steam, but there are multiple modded versions of the game that modify the original files with great features.

The one I installed is called KMQuake2. It was last updated in October 2013 to include 4K resolution support. KMQuake2’s about page lists some other added features: support for moving and animated transparent surfaces, mapper-specified transparency of any visible entity, any named pak and compressed pk3 files, and the autoloading and scaling of hi-res replacement textures in the TGA and JPG format.”

Installing KMQuake2 is easy: just download it from the downloads page here and unzip it in your Quake 2 installation directory.

Run it in high resolution

Running KMQuake2 in your monitor’s resolution is as easy as picking that resolution from the game’s video menu. It defaults to widescreen support, though you can choose to run the game in 4:3 if you prefer. I also turned up all the graphics and gore settings; you can turn those down if you want the game to look more like it did back in 1998.

Thanks to custom versions of Quake like KMQuake2, the game is remarkably easy to run today. It doesn’t take any special tinkering beyond a simple installation.

Mod it

Want to try a different version of Quake II? There are plenty to choose from.

R1Q2 doesn’t focus on graphical improvements like many of the custom engines, but instead focuses on stability and compatibility for online play.

QuakeIIxp is a newer engine despite its name, which mostly focuses on newer graphical features.

Yamagi Quake II emphasizes its stability, 64-bit support, and support for any resolution.

Page 28 of 28
Page 28 of 28
Wes Fenlon
Wes Fenlon
Social Links Navigation
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).

Read more
A Strogg standing on a gantry over a river of lava.
This Quake 2 mod bridges the gap between the original game and its sequel, with hybrid enemies including dog-headed parasites and rocket-blasting shamblers
 
 
Heretic + Hexen screenshot
Id Software kicks off QuakeCon with a surprise release of Heretic + Hexen, an 'enhanced' bundle with cross-platform multiplayer, mod support, and more
 
 
Close up of Shodan, antagonist of System Shock 2. Feminine face with circuitry spreading over it and out into wires surrounding.
Nightdive's System Shock 2 remaster now supports 26 years of mods and fan missions
 
 
A screencap of Hollow Knight: Silksong's opening cutscene. A close-up shot of protagonist Hornet moments before she breaks out of a metal cage. Her curved white mask and red cloak are lit up as a glowing strand of silk surrounds her.
Heroic tinkerer revives Windows 7 and gets Steam and Silksong running on it, so take that Microsoft and your constant nagging to upgrade to Win11
 
 
The DOSBox Pure logo
If emulating classic DOS games seems like a pain, there's a DOSBox fork 'aiming for simplicity and ease of use', now standalone for the first time
 
 
An image showing the protagonist of Heretic fending off horrible skeleton enemies
After all these years, Heretic plays better than it ever has—and thanks to Nightdive, even Hexen sucks far less
 
 
Latest in Action
Escape From Duckov - A green pigeon stands unaware while a duck in a SWAT helmet sneaks up from behind
Escape From Duckov quacks past 300,000 concurrent players only 10 days after release
 
 
A screenshot of Helldivers 2, depicting a Helldiver saluting while wearing an anthropomorphic facemask
It's Helldivers 2's Liberty Day, so break out your shovels and play Arrowhead's patriotic new Whack-a-Terminid browser game before it's gone
 
 
Warhammer: Vermintide 2
Vermintide's developers only realized they were wading into a cursed subgenre after they started making a first-person melee game: 'I was so scared'
 
 
The Ubersreik Five, and a skaven
Don't expect Vermintide 3 any time soon, as Fatshark plans to keep supporting the existing game: 'Vermintide will keep on going'
 
 
Escape From Duckov - A green pigeon stands unaware while a duck in a SWAT helmet sneaks up from behind
Escape From Duckov is the latest breakout Steam hit to owe its success to China
 
 
Image for Fatshark celebrates 10 years of 'Tide, reveals Darktide is getting another new class and Vermintide 2 a new map
Fatshark celebrates 10 years of 'Tide, reveals Darktide is getting another new class and Vermintide 2 a new map
 
 
Latest in Features
A screenshot from Misery showing two men in tracksuits drinking vodka and playing guitar
Five new Steam games you probably missed (October 27, 2025)
 
 
A billboard from PowerWash Simulator 2 with bright colored animals on it and a bit of dirt
PowerWash Simulator 2 introduces a new tool that makes washing mud from a billboard more enjoyable than ever
 
 
It breaks our hearts to cut great games from the Top 100 list, but sacrifices must be made—these are some of the omissions that caused us psychic damage this year
 
 
Femme Phyre with intricate scars and grey hair wearing one of the unique outfits in Bloodlines 2. It's black with gold and red rose detailing.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2's biggest mistake is being called Bloodlines 2
 
 
A large hero doing admin
Dispatch's superheroic efforts have changed my mind about its episodic release schedule
 
 
EU5 key art
25 years of making history: Europa Universalis lead Johan Andersson talks grey hair, running out of ideas for DLC, and only hiring a menus guy after 3 games
 
 
  1. Two of the best PC cases with the PC Gamer Recommended badge in the top right.
    1
    The best fish tank PC case in 2025: I've tested heaps of stylish chassis but only a few have earned my recommendation
  2. 2
    Best gaming laptop 2025: I've tested the best laptops for gaming of this generation and here are the ones I recommend
  3. 3
    Best Hall effect keyboards in 2025: the fastest, most customizable keyboards for competitive gaming
  4. 4
    Best PCIe 5.0 SSD for gaming in 2025: the only Gen 5 drives I will allow in my PC
  5. 5
    Best graphics cards in 2025: I've tested pretty much every AMD and Nvidia GPU of the past 20 years and these are today's top cards
  1. 8BitDo Pro 3 controller
    1
    8BitDo Pro 3 review
  2. 2
    Edifier G2000 Pro review
  3. 3
    Razer Raiju V3 Pro review
  4. 4
    The Outer Worlds 2 review
  5. 5
    Farthest Frontier review

PC Gamer is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

Add as a preferred source on Google
  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait...