Unreal Gold and Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition, two boomer shooters that helped propel Epic Games into the spotlight back in the late 1990s, are now available to download for no cost on Archive.org. News of these classic Unreal games being offered for free on the Internet Archive comes by way of the OldUnreal Discord server, with a message from UnrealGGecko explaining how this was made possible with Epic’s permission (“Thanks Tim!”). Unreal Gold and and Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition were previously available from digital storefronts that include Steam and GOG, but delisted for reasons that some critics have claimed to be laziness, greed, and/or licensing issues.
Link to the installers:
Direct link to the .ISOs from Archive.org:
- https://archive.org/download/ut-goty/UT_GOTY_CD1.iso
- https://archive.org/download/gt-unreal-1998/Unreal.iso
Unreal Tournament is the original King of the Hill in the frag-or-be-fragged multiplayer gaming world. As the undisputed 1999 Game of the Year, Unreal Tournament grabbed the first person shooter genre by the soiled seat of its pants and knocked it around the room with its never-before-seen graphics, brutal edge-of-your-seat gameplay and a massive and varied feature list that gave gamers more than they ever expected.
Your prison ship has crash-landed on the fastest, sleekest, most dangerous 3D world ever created. Look around, crystal clear water shimmers, shadows dance and shift, alien architecture fades into the horizon. Discover the secret of this mysterious planet and find out what caused a peaceful race to be enslaved by vicious merciless aggressors.
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Discussion (6 replies)
Join Discussion →I remember when I first played Unreal on my Voodoo 2 card (and Riva TNT), I was stunned with the first gun. When I shot it, the projectile glowed, and it glowed all the way down the hall. I was hooked! Then the outdoor scene was chef's kiss. It was so different from Quake and Quake 2, which had none. Still my top ten favorite game of all time.
I was amazed by the intro of Unreal Gold, I used a TNT2, one of my favorite games even though I never got to finish it. UT was awesome also.
In fact every now and then I install Unreal Gold just for kicks. Gotty try it @4k.
I wish it received the RTX Remix treatment.
Just came across my original disc's a few days ago. Installed with the latest patch and let the memories come back.
One assumes LAN play still works?
"Burticus, post: 91358, member: 297" wrote:One assumes LAN play still works?
I can vouch for it with the game I own so I would assume that this version would work as well, but I haven't tried it.
I got copies on Steam and copies on GOG, but sure, I'll take more copies. It's no longer available on digital storefronts, so this free archival copy is the only way to get the game now (outside from buying a physical from somewhere like eBay).
Unreal Gold with DX11 renderer and high-res texture packs looks f*cking amazing today. Plays great on modern systems with the OldUnreal 227 community patch. As much as I love the game, I could never get all the way through it. The game is pretty cheap and frustrating in places, and not all the area designs are the best. I last gave it a serious try to get through it a few years ago. I also hate the areas with infinite-respawning enemies. But this game is still very special to me. Not as much as UT99 (even though I overwhelmingly prefer single-player games), but I still love it. I gave up hoping for a 3rd game in the series long ago. We won't get an Unreal 3 and we won't get an Unreal Tournament 4 (I did play the alpha before the project was canceled). But Tencent-Epic ain't the same company as Epic Games, and Epic Games couldn't hope to match up to Epic MegaGames.
EDIT: I just saw that the article also mentions UT99. Now that one I do still have my physical copy of (GotY edition), as well as Steam and GOG copies. I've kept this game installed on every PC I've ever had since this game came out. These days I run it with the Epic-backed v469 community patch, and high-resolution textures. Of course both games still need some tweaking in their config ini files to look and run the best. PC Gaming Wiki covers most of the change you'd probably want to make if playing the game today. Both games support OpenAL thanks to the community patches, which means I get the full soundscape with EAX and proper hardware-accelerated audio on my X-Fi sound card (yes I still use one of those).
Discussion (6 replies)
Join Discussion →I remember when I first played Unreal on my Voodoo 2 card (and Riva TNT), I was stunned with the first gun. When I shot it, the projectile glowed, and it glowed all the way down the hall. I was hooked! Then the outdoor scene was chef's kiss. It was so different from Quake and Quake 2, which had none. Still my top ten favorite game of all time.
I was amazed by the intro of Unreal Gold, I used a TNT2, one of my favorite games even though I never got to finish it. UT was awesome also.
In fact every now and then I install Unreal Gold just for kicks. Gotty try it @4k.
I wish it received the RTX Remix treatment.
Just came across my original disc's a few days ago. Installed with the latest patch and let the memories come back.
One assumes LAN play still works?
I can vouch for it with the game I own so I would assume that this version would work as well, but I haven't tried it.
I got copies on Steam and copies on GOG, but sure, I'll take more copies. It's no longer available on digital storefronts, so this free archival copy is the only way to get the game now (outside from buying a physical from somewhere like eBay).
Unreal Gold with DX11 renderer and high-res texture packs looks f*cking amazing today. Plays great on modern systems with the OldUnreal 227 community patch. As much as I love the game, I could never get all the way through it. The game is pretty cheap and frustrating in places, and not all the area designs are the best. I last gave it a serious try to get through it a few years ago. I also hate the areas with infinite-respawning enemies. But this game is still very special to me. Not as much as UT99 (even though I overwhelmingly prefer single-player games), but I still love it. I gave up hoping for a 3rd game in the series long ago. We won't get an Unreal 3 and we won't get an Unreal Tournament 4 (I did play the alpha before the project was canceled). But Tencent-Epic ain't the same company as Epic Games, and Epic Games couldn't hope to match up to Epic MegaGames.
EDIT: I just saw that the article also mentions UT99. Now that one I do still have my physical copy of (GotY edition), as well as Steam and GOG copies. I've kept this game installed on every PC I've ever had since this game came out. These days I run it with the Epic-backed v469 community patch, and high-resolution textures. Of course both games still need some tweaking in their config ini files to look and run the best. PC Gaming Wiki covers most of the change you'd probably want to make if playing the game today. Both games support OpenAL thanks to the community patches, which means I get the full soundscape with EAX and proper hardware-accelerated audio on my X-Fi sound card (yes I still use one of those).