Breathing New Life Into Half-Life on GameSpy.com and Quake Is Reborn on Shacknews are the pair of articles (I think each site thought they had the exclusive on this one today) describing plans by Valve to release Deathmatch Classic (or DMC), which will be the original Quake (still considered unparalleled for deathmatch in the minds of many hardcore players) given a graphical makeover to make it more acceptable to gamers spoiled by the current generation of game graphics. According to GameSpy, this project is the first of "three totally unique 'modifications' if you will, for Half-Life" that Valve is working on. According to the reports, DMC will be almost identical to Quake in feel and gameplay, and will take the homage a step further by offering remakes of the most popular Quake maps: DM2, DM3(2), DM4, DM6, and E1M2. DMC will include an SDK and feature full mod support, and word is "It's looking just about complete and will be released 'very soon'," and according to GameSpy, they will be making the mod available exclusively on FilePlanet when the time comes (though if it's like most exclusive releases, that should probably read "unavailable"). Each article includes screenshots, tha Shack's has shots of almost all the weapons and levels, as well as quotes from Valve's Gabe Newell discussing the reasoning behind the remake, here's one of the quotes from Shacknews on that subject:

"...Given our existing license agreement with id, we were able to create DMC for our own entertainment. It really reminded us of just how kick-ass the game was and thought it would be a great reminder for everyone, and a tribute to id's accomplishments if we were to finish it and release it. So, we asked John Carmack about it, and he gave us the go-ahead to do this." - Gabe Newell