Zenimax Online announced a brand new Commander Keen game at Bethesda's E3 2019 press conference, but if you're expecting a return to the series' platformer roots... well, sorry. Commander Keen is a free-to-play mobile game for iOS and Android. In other words, it won't be coming to PC.

"Dadmiral Keen has been kidnapped, and only twin geniuses Billie and Billy can save him," reads the description, referring to the two playable characters. "Utilize a zany collection of gadgets that blast, bounce, and baffle your enemies in the solo Story Mode, or go helmet-to-helmet against your fellow commanders in Battle Mode. It’s time to kick some asteroid!"

It's a far cry from the classic 1990s platformers, and it's disappointing that an icon of PC gaming should skip PC entirely. The game's original creator, Tom Hall, said earlier this year that he'd love to make a new Commander Keen game, but that his letters to Zenimax had fallen on deaf ears. 

Here are the two trailers, for what it's worth:

For the past several months, Nvidia has been adding a fresh coat of ray-traced paint to Quake 2, which originally released way back in 1997. It is now available to download and play for free, in part or in whole, depending on whether you already own the original game or not.

Anyone who already owns Quake 2 can play the ray-traced remaster in its entirety at no cost. For everyone else, the first three levels are free. If you want to keep playing, you'll have to shell out a modest $4.99 to buy the original game, which then unlocks the complete RTX version.

Even though Quake 2 is more than two decades old, the official ray-traced version is taxing on graphics hardware. The RTX version uses path tracing to render almost everything on the screen, giving it "the highest workload of any ray-traced game released to date."

That means you can't play it with a GTX card, even though Nvidia adding ray tracing support to Turing and Pascal-based GTX variants. To play it, you will need a GeForce RTX 2060 or higher RTX graphics card, along with an Intel Core i3-3220 or AMD equivalent processor, 8GB of RAM, and 2GB of storage space.

Obviously a 22-year-old game with prettier visuals is the not the promised land for ray tracing, and for most people it's not reason alone to consider an RTX card. However, it's at least a nice bonus while we wait for more ray-traced games to appear. As it pertains to Quake 2 RTX, it's been upgraded with realistic reflections, refraction, shadows, and global illumination.

If you have the requisite hardware and want to check it out, you can grab Quake 2 RTX from Steam or download it directly from Nvidia.

Nvidia first showed off its remaster of Quake 2 at this year’s GDC, and you’ll be able to play it yourself June 6—provided your hardware is up to the task.

The announcement video above shows off the rocket jump forward ray tracing represents. Working with modder and Ph. D student Christoph Shied, Nvidia has replaced all the original effects in Quake 2 to create Quake 2 RTX, and it looks absolutely lovely.

Using real-time ray tracing for global illumination has meant that they’ve been able to add several new options, including the ability to select the time of day in a level. The team has also updated all of Quake 2s textures, some from the Q2XP mod pack and others they’ve enhanced themselves. 

Better yet, Nvidia will be posting the source code for Quake 2 RTX on GitHub to make it easy for modders to use this as a starting point either to enhance Quake 2 further or to use it in mods.

Nvidia says this version of Quake 2 uses path tracing to render just about everything you see on screen, which gives it “the highest workloads of any ray-traced game released to date.” Thus, the recommended system requirements are on the steep side: Nvidia recommends at least an RTX 2060 for this version of Quake 2.

Starting June 6, anyone will be able to download the first three levels of Quake 2 RTX, the same way id released the shareware version back in 1997. If you own the original Quake 2, you’ll be able to point Quake 2 RTX to your install folder and then play the full game with all the new ray-traced bells and whistles enabled.

Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.  

There were a lot of shareware games that didn't get played beyond the first, free episode in my neck of the woods. One that absolutely did was Wolfenstein 3D because word got out that at the end of the third episode you got to kill Hitler himself.

But first you we had to get to him. The final level contains new enemies who look like Hitler in a robe, shoot fireballs, and mock you with an echoing laugh after they die. These angry Hitler wizards are apparently just puppets with flamethrowers according to the internet, but I like the thought of the Führer keeping a bunch of magic clones in bathrobes around because it's no crazier than what happens next.

In the final room you confront Adolf Hitler, strapped into his own mechsuit, with chainguns for hands. The evolution of this design is something to see.

After you fill mecha Hitler with bullets he steps out of his armor and continues chasing you around the room with chainguns. That pixel Nazi face you've seen on hundreds of paintings all over Castle Wolfenstein is now staring at you from an oddly squat but hench body, zipping around at ludicrous speed. When he finally falls his body erupts into gore, which is exactly the reward for finishing a videogame teenagers in the 1990s wanted.

And then, the final Congratulations! text, exactly as overwritten and bizarre as you'd hope:

"The absolute incarnation of evil, Adolf Hitler, lies at your feet in a pool of his own blood. His wrinkled, crimson-splattered visage still strains, a jagged-toothed rictus trying to cry out. Insane even in death. Your lips pinched in bitter victory, you kick his head off his remains and spit on his corpse. Sieg heil. . . . huh. Sieg hell."

Says it all, really. 

Here's a pirate-themed total conversion for Wolfenstein 3D, a sentence that feels particularly wonderful to type. Creator fraggeur's mod The Golden Parrot has just hit version 1.0, and it changes up the base game to a surprising degree. You'll notice that the very grey corridors of the original Wolf3D have been replaced with a colourful, tropical landscape, while its Nazis have shuffled off in favour of pirates swinging cutlasses like there's no tomorrow.

You can wield a blade yourself, as you explore the island and its interiors, and you'll want to, as guns need to be reloaded now—and they're slow to do so. There are a bunch of new weapons drawn from the general pirate milieu, including flintlock pistols and rifles.

But perhaps the most interesting change is the inclusion of friendly merchants, who will sell you character upgrades in exchange for any loot you've purloined during your travels. Yep, Wolfenstein is kind of an RPG now, with stats and even character classes that can be selected at the start of the game.

The Golden Parrot is a standalone mod, so you need only download this file in order to play it.

For more great free experiences, check out our roundup of the best free PC games.

Sigil, the John Romero-authored "unofficial spiritual successor" to Ultimate Doom that was announced late last year, has been pushed back yet again. It was originally supposed to be out in February 2019, but was delayed into April because of problems with the planned physical release. Now April is here and it has slipped yet again, for the same reason, to the first week of May. 

The good news for fans is that the Sigil megawad is finished, and will still be free for everyone once it's out. But because Romero wants to ensure that people paying for the boxed editions have a fair first crack at it, the free release won't go out until a week after the paid release. 

Romero didn't specify which piece of the physical edition of Sigil is causing trouble, but given that we still don't have an image of the pewter statue of John Romero's head on a spike—included with the $166 Beast Box version—that's where I'd put my money if I was a betting man. For any practical purposes, it doesn't matter, as both the Beast Box and the standard boxed release are sold out. 

A solid release date hasn't been set yet either, but other details are available at romerogames.ie.

The use of AI neural networks to up-res classic PC games has gained traction of late. We've seen it done for Doom, we've seen it done for Morrowind, and a whole host of emulated PlayStation games have been given the treatment. 

But now, thanks to modder grandgreed, there's a neural network-created texture pack for the underrated FPS classic Heretic, taking in all surface textures, as well as enemy and pick-up sprites. Grandgreed was also responsible for the recent Hexen Neural Texture Pack.

There's a wealth of screenshots over on the Nexusmods page, and if you don't own the original game it's permanently very cheap on Steam. For now, here are a few images cherrypicked from the mod page (and thanks to DSO Gaming for the tip). 

This year's QuakeCon will go heavy on the Doom, the famed FPS that preceded the big bring-your-own-computer show's namesake. The reason is that 2019 is, somewhat loosely, the 25th anniversary of the original Doom—it was released in December 1993—and Bethesda isn't going let the "Year of Doom" go uncelebrated.

QuakeCon 2019 "will include all-new Doom-inspired activities, events, exclusives, developer panels, hands-on demos, new information about Doom Eternal, and a few surprises we aren’t quite ready to talk about," Bethesda said. "All while continuing to feature everything you already love about QuakeCon." 

The centerpiece will once again be the huge BYOC LAN party, but registration is being handled slightly differently this year: Instead of picking a seat when you sign up, BYOC seat selection will take place at a later, unannounced date. As always, the show will also include panels, hands-on with various Bethesda games—maybe Wolfenstein: Youngblood will make an appearance?—redonkulous case mods, swag, and other stuff.

QuakeCon 2019 will run July 25-28 in Dallas, Texas. Registration for the BYOC action or the new "QuakeCon Done Quick" pass with priority entry to all Main Stage events and early access to the exhibit hall on Saturday, will open at 10 am ET on April 11, while general admission entry is free.

Great moments in PC gaming are short, bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.  

The first-person shooters of the 1990s were fast-paced, but Quake seemed faster than anything before it. Truly 3D levels, mouselook, a bouncy regular jump even if you weren't abusing rocket-jumps—it added up to a zippiness that felt powerful and new. 

Clever level design solved the Sonic problem of having areas full of secrets but a character who only feels good at top speed. There's often one particular key or something you need but there's also a convenient loop back through a section of the level so you can barrel around looking for things you missed, shooting suspicious patches of wall texture or swimming under bridges, during which you naturally find a secret or two before discovering that gold key or whatever.

When you hit a boss fight it still doesn't slow down. Chthon emerges from the lava and instead of standing in one spot shooting away at his health bar you keep moving, racing his fireballs to flip switches just like you do when looping through an ordinary level, only now you're lowering pylons into position then electrocuting the big jerkbag of an elder god.

There are plenty of other things about Quake to celebrate, like the soundtrack and the multiplayer and the mods, but let's not forget Chthon. Fighting him sets you up for the finale, which is another puzzle boss who can't be shot, and it's also a great capstone for the playstyle it's taught you.

And then at the end of the level when it's tallying your score and number of secrets you get to see Chthon's gibs squirting all over the screen. Quake knew what we wanted and it delivered. 

When it released in January, Q2VKPT offered a real-time ray traced version of Quake 2, demonstrating how a broad range of associated techniques could improve a 22-year-old game. Created by Christoph Schied, it used an RTX technique known as Path Tracing in order to create more lifelike lighting effects, and the results are impressive (there's a video at the bottom of the page).

Nvidia has been paying close attention, announcing today a collaboration with Schied (himself a former Nvidia intern) on Quake 2 RTX—a "purely ray-traced game". In other words, it rips out all traditional effects and replaces them with ray-traced lighting, reflections, shadows and VFX. 

According to Nvidia, that means "real-time, controllable time of day lighting, with accurate sunlight and indirect illumination; refraction on water and glass; emissive, reflective and transparent surfaces; normal and roughness maps for added surface detail; particle and laser effects for weapons; procedural environment maps featuring mountains, sky and clouds, which are updated when the time of day is changed; a flare gun for illuminating dark corners where enemies lurk; an improved denoiser; SLI support (hands-up if you rolled with Voodoo 2 SLI back in the day); Quake 2 XP high-detail weapons, models and textures; optional NVIDIA Flow fire, smoke and particle effects, and much more!"

The full run-down, including before-and-after shots, is on the Nvidia site, and a video will follow eventually. More than likely after the associated GDC 2019 panel on March 21. In the meantime, here's the original Q2VKPT in action: