Happy 15th birthday Quake 2 (I love you)

Quake 2 taught me to mouse-look and strafe, showed me how 3D graphics cards (Voodoo2) could pimp a picture and made me understand "FOV" and "gg" and "wp".

Quake 2 showed me rocket jumps and the pleasure of nailing a moving target half-a-map away with a railgun blast.

Quake 2 opened my eyes to competitive online multiplayer.

Yesterday Quake 2 turned 15 years old.

To mark the occasion, id Software's Tim Willits shared a few facts about the game.

Only three artists made all the 2D and 3D art for the game, apparently, although most of those player models and textures were rapidly expanded on by the community.

Quake 2 could have been called WOR, but ultimately id Software thought the fast-paced action better suited the Quake label.

The Edge (Q2DM1) - Tim Willits' and many others' favourite deathmatch level - has over 50 trick jumps possible on it. Willits apparently only designed two of them, the rest were discovered by the community.

How many can you remember? I think I can remember the jump by the water that hid the railgun; if you stood by the spawn point, ran at an angle and then jumped off a contour you could spring yourself up onto a ledge where there was some extra ammo and, err, health perhaps. Risky though, what with the snipery rocket launcher ledge nearby.

There was another clever jump off the stairs in the main room up to the top of a large crate. From there you could strafe jump to the top of the other two boxes and net yourself the mega health. I think you could also achieve this by jumping up into the corner of the little box by the two bigger boxes.

I recall another jump near the bottom of the lift off of the ramp that neatly landed you on the upper platform without needing to run round.

But it was 15 years ago so my memory struggles, and I was never as good or as competitive as Rupert Loman.