American studio Epic Games has given users free access to two classic games from 25 years ago. We are talking about the cult shooters Unreal (1998) and Unreal Tournament (1999).
Image source: Epic Games
As noted by users of the ResetEra forum, the team of the fan site OldUnreal, with the permission of Epic Games, posted images of the original discs of both games for free download in the Internet Archive digital library.
«We can confirm that Unreal 1 and Unreal Tournament are available on archive.org. Users are free to link to and play these versions,” Epic Games commented to PC Gamer and Polygon.
Unreal doesn’t hide its age
The Unreal and Unreal Tournament ISO files from the Internet Archive are available at these two links. The OldUnreal team provides instructions for installing games on Windows, Linux and macOS in their Discord.
OldUnreal received permission from Epic Games at the end of October, and recently, to improve the convenience of installation, new installers for Unreal in the gold edition and Unreal Tournament in the Game of the Year version were released.
Unreal Tournament
Polygon recalls that last January, Epic Games shut down the Unreal and Unreal Tournament servers (along with several other projects), so you will have to turn to unofficial servers to play multiplayer for both shooters.
In December 2022, Epic Games removed the first Unreal (and other games in the series) from sale on Steam. Fortnite’s success has left Unreal Tournament without a future, but at least its past is safe.