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Classic shooters Unreal and Unreal Tournament are now free and preserved on the Internet ArchiveCTF on Facing Worlds, anyone?
CTF on Facing Worlds, anyone?
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Epic Games
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Epic Games
Epic Games has given the OK for their 1998 shooterUnrealto be hosted on the Internet Archive, essentially making the classic sci-fi alien blaster free, and preserving it for the future. They’ve also given the same permission forUnreal Tournamentto be hosted there too, making free the multiplayer muckabout that spawned speedier and speedier sequels throughout the early 2000s (not to mention the origin of one of themost memorable multiplayer FPS maps of all time, Facing Worlds).
These basically slurp the .iso files from the Internet Archive’s server and run everything necessary to get the games installed on modern machines. I tested it for Unreal Tournament and, yup, everything looks lovely. You’ll still need to do some extra steps to play online with others, though, say the Old Unreal gang.
Epic Games delisted the first Unreal from Steam a couple of years ago, along with all other Unreal games. The reasons for this are obvious, considering Epic has its own store that directly competes with Steam. It still annoyed some people though. Maybe now that two of these games are totally free, no questions asked, that move can be forgiven. We are recently seeing some moves here and there towards game preservation, such as GOGrenewing their vows to making classic games playable on modern PCs. And this isn’t the first time Epic gave their original shootsoaway for free(although that was a temporary birthday celebration). But yes. All this is generally good.Free gamesare good.
