My brother, an FPS fan trying to make his own games, has recently told me that the Quake port for the Sega Saturn MAY have had (possibly hidden or incomplete) NetLink support. My brother is a bit autistic, so when I pressed him for where he found this information, I didn't really get a straight answer, but he was very insistent that what he told me was true.
I'm wondering, does anyone here know anything about this? Was my brother making this up? Or is there some truth to this?
Quake NetLink Support?
I didn't put that much research into it; I don't know if Quake actually supported the DirectLink or not. I just saw both mentioned in the same place. I'd take it as a rumor at most, unless you find more solid information.
I have my Saturns, I have some of my games, I have a RasPi. Gotta put all this stuff together!
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JerryTerrifying
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As the self proclaimed resident Saturn FPS buff I can easily answer this for you 
QUAKE FOR SATURN has NO netlink play, NO Directlink cable play and NO multiplayer whatsoever.
It was only a single player experience. It was unfortunate. Ive always thought about and wished Quake had at least DirectLink or even simple Splitscreen play let alone Netlink play. But alas. NONE. Its still a fantastic port and one of only two on the consoles (N64 version was good). It really showed off Saturns ability to do lighting and polygons well.
The only other FPS on the Saturn to even have a hint of Multiplayer (besides obvious Duke) is HEXEN which can only be accessed through Debug mode and its so buggy that its unplayable. Its done via DirectLink cable play with 2 systems and 2 hexens. It was a feature that was obviously never finished but cool that you could still access it. I started making a video for this as its interesting but unfortunately not playable.
Doom also advertised 2 player directlink play on the back of the box but was not actually included. The Japanese version of Doom however does include it. If I ever find another copy of Jap Doom Saturn for under 50$ I may try to make a video of this.
Otherwise Doom, Congo, Powerslave, Alien Trilogy, Quake etc have no mplayer at all. Just Duke netlink, Hexen debug and Doom Jap version.
Its unfortunate because the perk of FPS games back in their glory years was multiplayer.
QUAKE FOR SATURN has NO netlink play, NO Directlink cable play and NO multiplayer whatsoever.
It was only a single player experience. It was unfortunate. Ive always thought about and wished Quake had at least DirectLink or even simple Splitscreen play let alone Netlink play. But alas. NONE. Its still a fantastic port and one of only two on the consoles (N64 version was good). It really showed off Saturns ability to do lighting and polygons well.
The only other FPS on the Saturn to even have a hint of Multiplayer (besides obvious Duke) is HEXEN which can only be accessed through Debug mode and its so buggy that its unplayable. Its done via DirectLink cable play with 2 systems and 2 hexens. It was a feature that was obviously never finished but cool that you could still access it. I started making a video for this as its interesting but unfortunately not playable.
Doom also advertised 2 player directlink play on the back of the box but was not actually included. The Japanese version of Doom however does include it. If I ever find another copy of Jap Doom Saturn for under 50$ I may try to make a video of this.
Otherwise Doom, Congo, Powerslave, Alien Trilogy, Quake etc have no mplayer at all. Just Duke netlink, Hexen debug and Doom Jap version.
Its unfortunate because the perk of FPS games back in their glory years was multiplayer.
Netlink Games Owned:
-Duke Nukem 3D
-Sega Rally
-Bomberman
-Virtua On
-Daytona CCE Netlink Edition
If you wanna play just give me a holla!
-Duke Nukem 3D
-Sega Rally
-Bomberman
-Virtua On
-Daytona CCE Netlink Edition
If you wanna play just give me a holla!
Your brother's confusion might be over the fact that Quake runs on the same engine as Duke Nukem 3D (which itself was a modified Powerslave) and thus theoretically could have transitioned to NetLink a little easier with Nukem's back end. Thus, it was not the case. That doesn't rule out the possibility for some lost code somewhere in the game, but I certainly haven't seen anything of it. As someone who played Quake when it first came out back in the day, the multiplayer maps were actually just the single player maps until QuakeWorld came out and introduced us to kickass levels like The Abandoned Base, etc. Online or not, though, it's a pretty swell port. To this day I still think there's no better FPS engine on a console than the one pioneered with Powerslave.
That's fly.