An update to Planet Romero in honor of Quake's fifth birthday the other day offers "Lost Entrance of the Dismal Oubliette," a map that at one point was intended for inclusion in Quake that was cut for exceeding their file size for .bsps. Here's a bit from the accompanying update that fills us in on the history of this map:

Yes, there used to be a much more interesting beginning to that area of Quake, but I had to amputate the guy and cauterize the wound into its current state, the starting point of e2m6. I remember spending many hours trying to get it just right, to create the feeling of an awful, cavernous pit for the player to get out of and into the real horror of the Oubliette. It added a nice bit of gameplay time and I'm sorry that it had to go, but we set the .BSP file size at 1.4Mb and had to be strict about it.

But today, on Quake's 5th Birthday, I will give you a personal piece of Quake's creation that I treasure. Be careful with it, it's fragile and one of a kind and was created back in the mists of time around QTest's release. I've named the map E2M10.BSP and am including the E2M10.MAP that chronicles its creation. Looking closely at the .map file will reveal some long-lost entities that we had in Quake and I'm not sure if I even remember what they did...