I still remember when, years ago, the first episode of the series was released. It was 1996, and when I saw for the first time on the screen of my pc the three doors that allowed to choose the difficulty level of the game, I was, in a word, thrilled. In comparison to the other titles from Id software, like Doom or Hexen, which really had created a genre, Quake had something different, a deeper atmosphere. The squared and rusted axe which you had to use at the beginning of the game to kill your enemies, remains one of the most delightful weapons ever realized for a videogame, second only to the pickaxe used by Harry in Silent Hill (have you ever tried killing those filthy giant black beetles in the sewer of Silent Hill? It was so relaxing...).

And here we are, five years later, with the news that Quake III will finally do its appearance on the new Sony’s console; the title of this new version will be Quake III: Revolution. Activision developed the original PC game; Bullfrog has been charged to port the game to Ps2. It’s difficult to exploit what the word "revolution" in the title really means. Quake 3, as any new generation’s fps, requires a good Pc to be enjoyed; probably a 400 Mhz Celeron with 64 mb of Ram is really the minimum configuration to play this game without any slowdown issue. It won't be simple for Bullfrog to port this game on the new console.

Without going too much into details, we’ll say the internal architecture of the Ps2 is completely different from the one of a normal PC (you can read a wonderful article from arstechnica.com, if you like to have a deeper knowledge of your console) and this will cause a lot of problems to the new developers, especially because of the small amount of Vram, usually used in First person shooters to store the textures.

The first goal that the developers should be able to achieve is to create a game that constantly runs at 60 frames per second, in high resolution; the second goal will be to succeed in transporting the controls from the mouse-keyboard system used in the Pc version to the new Dual Shock 2, which has revealed itself to be excellent for fps like TimeSplitters and Unreal Tournament; last but not least is to create a gaming experience loyal to Quake’s tradition. While it's sure that Quake 3: Revolution will not let players play online games, the multiplayer mode using the classic split screen technique is a certainty.

In Quake 3 Revolution there will be more characters and more levels in comparison than the ones featured in the Pc version; it would be great if someone would have the idea to include a nice level editor in the package.