Honestly, Quake wasn't the first or the worst of such games. It's funny - in the PC market when a game would come out that simply wouldn't run at full speed on any computer at the time of its release was not a big deal - you just waited a while until new HW came out that could run it well (Strike Commander, Ultima VIII...). On Amiga in the second half of the 90s the 060 accelerators came out, but that was it - of course nobody knew at the time. So games that don't run that well on the 060 are basically only playable on UAE (maybe Natami or some FPGA in the future).
I personally think AB3D2 was much worse optimized than any Quake port. But that may be just my problem, because other people have apparently played it on 040 and it ran well (I've never tried patching the game). Quake on 060 with RTG is actually very playable (and a much better game than AB3D2 I might add...).