If you’re not an old fart, you might be more familiar with Unreal through the Engine, rather than the game that engine was initially created to make. And while Unereal (the game) may have long since passed from the gaming pantheon (despite an attempt to revive the series in the mid-10’s that ultimately got its lunch eaten by Fortnite), it’s still undeniable that the game had an effect on the landscape, much like Half-Life, Quake and Duke Nukem. And if you notice a pattern with all of those games, well… let’s just say Hal-Life is the only one to have officially gotten anything in the past decade and leave it at that.
But that leads us to today. Those in the know are aware of the fact that it’s impossible to buy Unreal on any platform; Epic delisted the games entirely, in what many consider an absolutely shameful act. Well, not anymore, at least for Unreal and Unreal Tournament (and maybe more to come?).
With the news first coming from Old Unreal, both Unreal and Unreal Tournament have been uploaded, officially, to Internet Archive. Free, available to any and all, no strings attached. As an epic spokescreature speaking to Polygon said:
We can confirm that Unreal and Unreal Tournament are available on Archive.org and people are free to independently link to and play these versions.
That’s the good news. The bad news, if you can really call it bad news, is that Epic has long since killed the official servers off for both games; luckily, there are community servers galore. Also worth noting is the fact that these are over 20-year-old computer games, so installing might be difficult. Old Unreal also has you covered here with installers for both Unreal and Unreal Tournament which will download these games from Internet Archive and apply the latest patches for you.
And, hey, if you want to know a bit of the history and also what the first game has in store for you, Civvie just so happens to have made a video about Unreal back when Epic was delisting these games.
As for Unreal Tournament, the granddaddy of Arena Shooters, well, you’ve got the original trailer. Good memories of playing this one with a friend, man…
Source: Polygon
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