That's actually where id software got their inspiration for the Q2 rail iirc. The trails from the Q2 railgun are blue and spiraled just like in Eraser - a very subtle media reference which id probably threw in for fun. Pretty neat.
lol "a very subtle media reference". eraser came out... and then q2 had the gun right after. super cool but not subtle. maybe the doom chainsaw from evil dead would be subtle.
The RG in Quake is more of a display of what future railgun technology might provide. To actually make a handheld railgun, you'd have to be able to find a way to greatly reduce the amount of force towards the user so it is safe to hold and shoot like a typical firearm, while at the same time making it lightweight. This is quite the conundrum, for the less weight an object has, the less inertia it possesses.
As Newton's 3rd law states, "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction". The slug, when shot from the nozzle, would travel at such a velocity that the reaction of the actual gun would force it backwards, potentially hitting the chest or sides of the user, causing substantial injury and making it impractical for usage. That's why current railguns are so large and heavy - they have more mass; therefore more inertia and in turn more resistant to motion.
Just my contributions. Also, there's apparently some anime called "Toaru Kagaku No Railgun", wonder what that could be.
But why not just make sure that the projectile has very very very little mass? :) You can compensate with high speed and ridiculously high temperatures.. exactly what I would expect about the slug of the railgun.
"A Certain Scientific Railgun" - in that anime there is a girl with a nickname "railgun". She can control electromagnetic forces and uses that to fire coins like a railgun.
That anime and the main series "Toaru Majutsu no Index" suffer from horrible adaptation decay.