I played through Quake multiple times, and never knew this was the story behind it...

I had 3DFX then dual Voodoo-2, then geforce 256

Ah nostalgia. I bought a Canopus Pure 3D II for playing Quake. Soooo much fun. Even had my own cable modem back then that I paid for with money from my first job because my parents were sick of me tying up the phone line all the time with my USR 56k.

I used to use my 400watt Klipsch subwoofer for my game seat. You could really feel the grenade launcher and shotgun.

I got a 4mb Voodoo 1 passthrough card when they first came out and to this day still think it was the most "holy shit!" game changer I have ever seen. 800x600 using Glide was unreal. I also had a GF 256 and while it certainly smoked the Voodoos in performance, the difference between software rendering and the Glide API was mindblowing.

Me too! Diamond Monster 3D. I remember GLquake and QuakeWorld. Wow. And then a Creative Labs 3D Blaster and on. http://zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/toys.html for my history.

Purely by accident, I bought the infamous Asus "Wallhax" GForce 256.

With all the BS surrounding it, Asus never actually intended it as a cheat. The settings were designed for viewing 3D models with the glasses they made to go with the card. The settings were under "stereoscopic glasses" or something like that in settings. There was nothing intended to be wallhax or the like, just developer settings in the drivers.

It was like if Toyota built a Camry that used a special paint to reduce drag by 50% but later was proven to make you completely invisible to police speed radar.