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Over the past few years the high-definition remaster has become a popular way to enjoy classic games, using more powerful hardware to deliver an enhanced, higher performance experience. Looking back, Sony Santa Monica's brilliant God of War Collection in 2009 was clearly the catalyst for this new trend, but the reality is that id Software produced a remarkable 1080p60 HD remaster that shipped at launch alongside the Xbox 360 four years prior. The game? Quake 2.During a recent binge on retro games, we found ourselves marvelling at various console conversions of classic id shooters. The Xbox 360 conversion of Quake 2 was released exclusively as a bonus disc packaged with the horrific Quake 4, and we were impressed by what we found: an optimised 1080p, 60 frames per second rendition of the classic id shooter, released at a time when the console itself was physically incapable of producing a full HD output - which may explain why its charms were overlooked at the time.
Coded predominantly by id (now Nvidia) programmer Brian Harris, Quake 2 for Xbox 360 started life as a simple conversion, more than likely a minor project that allowed id to test the waters on what was then 'next-gen' console development. Of course, by the time the Xbox 360 launched, Quake 2 was already eight years old and not exactly an impressive technical showcase, so the undoubted quality of the console port may not seem like a huge achievement. However, as we've seen time and again, reproducing an original game on a different architecture can reveal unforeseen challenges, resulting in a poor conversion. In the case of Quake 2, id was able to achieve things that few other games on the system would ever manage, including support for 1080p output - a hardware feature that would elude the console until September 2006, when support was added via a firmware update.
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