Official Release Date of Quake 2? Its 15th Birthday?

[Nephi]

Everywhere I look it seems that there is a different release date for Quake 2. Google says December 6th, 1997. Wikipedia says November 30th. Quake Wiki says December 9th. IGN says November 11th. WHO KNOWS THE EXACT DATE?! I want to celebrate my favorite game's 15th birthday on the correct date, you know what I'm saying? I think we need to do some detective work to figure this one out. Or maybe someone who is just old enough and can remember that date exactly when they first bought it. Thanks! (I'll be so pissed if I missed the actual date already!)

[The Happy Friar]

From PlanetQuake the (once) best damn quake site on the 'net!

Quake II was the highly anticipated sequel to id Software's revolutionary Quake. As with the first game, a technology demo was released prior to the commercial release, on October 19, 1997, at an unannounced online IRC party. The demo contained the first set of levels from the single-player game, and contained no multiplayer support.

Quake II's game engine was once again far ahead of anything else commercially available, and the full version of the game was released to the public on December 9, 1997.

While a sequel in name, Quake II's story had little to do with the first game in the series. You play a space marine very much alone on the Strogg's home planet after a massive troop drop goes horribly wrong. You'll battle through Stroggos until you finally meet the leader of this relentless race, the Makron face to...face? Another Quake means that the FPS online scene got another boost with more raw Deathmatch action as well as the now offically supported CTF mode.

[QwazyWabbit]

From John Carmack's .plan file, 1997:

Quake2 has mastered. (Dec01,1997)

Where we go from here:
Point release.
We should have a Quake 2 point release out shortly after the game gets in your hands. We intend to fix any bugs that turn up, improve the speed some what, and optimize for internet play in various ways. We will also be making several deathmatch only maps.
Deathmatch in Q2 has gotten a lot of lan testing (Thresh, Redwood, and Vik Long helped quite a bit the last week with tuning), but not much in-ternet testing. There are probably gaping holes in it, but we will address them soon.
The deathmatch code in the shipping Q2 is also not designed to hold up against malicious users - there is no protection against clients being ob-noxious and constantly changing skins, chat flooding, client-side cheat-ing, or whatever.

...

BIG BUG IN Q2 NETWORKING! (Dec09,1997)
 
If you run multiplayer servers, download:
ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake2/q2_306.zip

...

The Quake 2 public code release is up at (Dec11,1997)
 
ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake2/source/q2source_12_11.zip
 
This source code distribution is only for hard-core people that are going to spend a lot of time pouring over it. This is NOT a how-to-make-levels-for-q2 type dsitribution!This should keep a bunch of you busy for a while.

You can say Q2 was shipped for mastering on Dec. 1, 1997, so that was the code that shipped on the retail CD. The 3.06 point release on December 9 was the one I remember as being the "official" multiplayer version. All my historical memory of the game stems from that 3.06 release. Happy Friar's LAN test on October 19 was a test of incomplete Q2 and there were many changes before the release. It looks like that December 6, 1997 date from Google is correct but there is no post from John Carmack on that date. No doubt he was busy coding the point release.

[The Happy Friar]

I went looking @ PQ's news archives at the time:
*Q2's EU release day was 12/12/07
*Q2's US/Canada was 12/09/07 (I was at EB games that day, btw.  )
*Denmark was selling it in 12/7/07
*Q2 copies available at the release party on 12/05/07

link: http://planetquake.gamespy.com/show_archives.php?month=12&day=7&year=1997

So, 12/9/07 was official, Google is wrong, Wikipedia is wrong, IGN is wrong.

PQ was right.   

[ImperiusDamian]

IIRC I *got* it on the 12th when it was released in the UK. So I've been with Q2 from Day One.

[QwazyWabbit]

I went looking @ PQ's news archives at the time:
*Q2's EU release day was 12/12/07
*Q2's US/Canada was 12/09/07 (I was at EB games that day, btw.  )
*Denmark was selling it in 12/7/07
*Q2 copies available at the release party on 12/05/07

link: http://planetquake.gamespy.com/show_archives.php?month=12&day=7&year=1997

So, 12/9/07 was official, Google is wrong, Wikipedia is wrong, IGN is wrong.

PQ was right.   

I think you mean 97, not 07. But I contend that 12/6/97 is the day.

Gold on 12/1/97.
Preorders accepted on id's site: 12/4/97
Release party on 12/5/97
US release 12/6/97.

[The Happy Friar]

Yeah, 97 not 07.  Oopes.

Where do you get US release on the 6th?  December 6th, 1997 was a Saturday, games are normally released in Tuesdays, movies Thursdays in North America.

[QwazyWabbit]

Yeah, 97 not 07.  Oopes.

Where do you get US release on the 6th?  December 6th, 1997 was a Saturday, games are normally released in Tuesdays, movies Thursdays in North America.

The party was the evening of the 5th. Presumbably it was delivered to stores by that date for display Saturday. Preorders were commenced on the 4th. He wrote nothing in his plan file about Q2 between stating it was gold on the 1st and stating the 3.06 point release was available on the 9th. The stated goal was that the CD would be released and the first point release "within a few days". I assume he was a busy guy between the 2nd and the 9th.


http://www.scribd.com/doc/14191/John-Carmack-Archive-plan-1997

[The Happy Friar]

releases weren't as big a deal back then.  It could very well of been sent to stores, but it didn't come out until the following Tuesday.  If it were then PQ would of said people were getting it three or four days ahead of time. 

The first patch was released on release day, but since it's '97 I'm betting 95% of the buyers didn't even know as internet wasn't that prevalent and bbs's wouldn't of had it yet.

[ImperiusDamian]

I don't think I patched Q2 until 3.09 or 3.10 *nods* I only had Internet at my university's computer lab, so... yeah.  Didn't have my own Net access until something like six months after 3.20 was released.

[QwazyWabbit]

releases weren't as big a deal back then.  It could very well of been sent to stores, but it didn't come out until the following Tuesday.  If it were then PQ would of said people were getting it three or four days ahead of time. 

The first patch was released on release day, but since it's '97 I'm betting 95% of the buyers didn't even know as internet wasn't that prevalent and bbs's wouldn't of had it yet.

I don't know where you get this Tuesday thing, that may be the case today but I don't even remember it being the practice 15 years ago. Please present your evidence for that being in effect in 1997. I see none. Absent any positive evidence of a true release date, I will personally observe it on Dec. 1 since that's the only sure date from the horses mouth about when the code went Gold. It's also universal since it doesn't matter what country you live in.

As far as the prevalence of the internet, I was doing internet stuff on 300 baud modems back in 1980. In 1997 I was reading John Carmack's .plan files directly on a Unix box and on a Windows box in Netscape on 96kbps modems, perhaps even a 128k ISDN line, I can't remember the specifics off hand, I'd have to look for the ISDN bills and I'm too lazy right now. I seldom used BBSs and I know the plan file wasn't distributed that way.

I also know I was downloading the 3.06 code directly off the idSoftware server that day after I had purchased the retail CD in a store so I know that had to be between the 1st and the 6th.

I don't know any store that would have let a popular product like the much-anticipated Q2 sit in their stock rooms for three days waiting for a Tuesday when they could have all weekend to sell it off the shelf. I don't know anyone who would sign a contract to embargo it for that long either.


I just checked my Quicken reports. I was doing 128k ISDN in December of 1997. Prior to that it was 96k dialup.

[The Happy Friar]

I've given evidence of the release date: the release date list publicly announced.

Here's the PQ news post saying it was released "today" (12/9/97):
http://planetquake.gamespy.com/fullstory.php?id=58141
Bluesnews says the same thing back then:
http://www.bluesnews.com/archives/dec97-1.html
Quake2.com:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110720064435/http://www.quake2.com/

The question wasn't when id finalized the CD code, it's when it was OFFICIALLY available in stores.  I don't disagree on the gold date.

People got it earlier I'm sure.  Thieves are everywhere and before the iso's were stolen by the duplication company employes the discs were stolen by the shippers & store employes.

The date of the patch doesn't matter.

Talk to stores, they many times sit on stuff to wait to sell.  To sell it they sign a contract and if the contract says you can't sell it before date X you can't.  Ones who do get fined.  When I went to pick up Doom 3 UPS didn't even drop it off at the store until 11am that day.  In their (Activision) SEC filings they talk about contracts with retailers.

So, unless someone has a statement from id or Activision (as id didn't self publish Q2) saying it was released a different day, the USA release date was December 9th, 1997.