Spawns – Quake. 9 iconic & notorious enemies from 90s' games

What were the spawns?

Quake was the first game to introduce fully 3-D enemy models to the first-person shooter genre, which finally consisted of polygons rather than flat sprites. One of the monsters of quake lore was the spawn, also called tarbaby. It's a shapeless, blue bolb with tiny eye sockets, and the unique abstractness of its body meant that the spawn was considered a Lovecraftian creature. The Spawns loved to lurk in dark corners to instantly attack their prey, and they were even deadlier in a group.

Why were they memorable?

Spawn has been recognized not only as one of the vilest creatures in Quake, but in the pantheon of virtual opponents in computer games in general. Even the authors of the game were aware of how vile a monster they had inadvertently created, and only included it in the fourth episode. The spawn attacks consisted of leapong towards the player, bouncing off walls to finally hit the victim. That dash alone was deadly, but spawns also had the ability to explode upon death. Without armor, this made killing the monster in your vicinity pretty much suicidal. Each encounter meant a very unequal fight and a nightmare that would be coming back for a long time.

Honorable mention – Fiend

The Fiend is something of a muscular ape – no eyes, though, and a powerful jaw and claws. Not very tall, it could move unnaturally fast for its size. The blooded mouth of this creature were a clear sign of what awaited the monster's victims. According to the creator – John Romero – the lack of eyesight was due to their natural habitat – dark and damp, where eyes were not very useful.

Fiends were the first serious threat the players faced in the early stages of Quake. Their main attack was a quick and extremely long leap from large distances. If the fiend accurately landed this attack, it dealt massive damage. The main defense against the jumping was to strafe – a maneuver that Quake instantly taught us with the fight with this opponent. Once the creature got up close, it would attack with its deadly claws – but it were the long and fast surprise jumps that gave the players the hardest time.

1. Quake in our encyclopedia