Unreal Tournament

History

In the beginning there was Quake. And it was good. When Epic first announced their own competitive multiplayer FPS game building up on their inhouse Engine they had used for their single player FPS Unreal, most people didn't take them very seriously considering the giant fanbase of the quake series.

UT developed by [Digital Extremes] was published in November 1999 by [GTInteractive] for PC and was since then released for PS2, Linux, Dreamcast and Mac. Quake III was published around the same time but offered little new, whereas UT could offer multiple game modes form simple Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, Domination, Last Man Standing to Assault, new Movement types (Dodging), more diverse weapons with multiple firing modes that could be combined, intelligent Bots, it could be modded easily and and could provide one thing most of all: FUN!!! (lots of it)

UT won several game of the year awards and a GOTY Edition was released that contained additional free content like maps, skins, models etc... that the developers had released to the community before in the form of several free bonus packs. This development philosophy to improve and enhance the product with free bonus stuff has become characteristic of the UT series and was continued in the sequel of UT Unreal Tournament 2003 that was published in late 2002. It helped to build up the large Unreal community that today is stronger than ever before. Since the release of UT Quake and its successors had to live under the ever growing shadow of the Unreal franchise. In 2003 Quake 4 is still nowhere to be seen, while Unreal Tournament 2004 is to be released during holiday season.

[Official Website]

[Download latest patch and free bonus packs]

Reviews

Read what [IGNPC] had to say about UT in their review 1999:

Unreal Tournament is getting the highest score that IGNPC has ever given a game. Simply put, Epic has earned it by delivering a title that is as close to flawless as I've ever seen, both in its ability to entertain and in its finely honed technology and presentation. While there's no doubt that Quake III is a powerfully addictive game with some advantages over Unreal, I feel like, in the long run, Unreal Tournament will be the better of the two games. Still, Tal is currently working on his Quake III review and you'll have to wait until next week to see our head-to-head comparison of the two games. In the end though, none of this really matters - this is a title that will keep you (and your friends) busy for a very long time to come. Go buy it.

Game Info

Developer: [Digital Extremes]
Publisher: GT Interactive
Genre: Action, Shooters
Release Date: November 3, 1999

Gametypes and Modes

Multiplayer (Up to 32 players over LAN or Internet)
Deathmatch
Team Deathmatch
Domination
Capture the Flag
Assault
Last Man Standing.

System Requirements

Minimum:

Pentium II 200 MHz, 32 MB RAM, Windows 95/98/NT4/2000

3D accelerator, Windows-compatible sound card, 2x CD-ROM, and 120 MB hard-disk space.

I ran it on a Pentium (1!) 233, 64MB ram, voodoo II 8MB

Available Patches

Latest official patch by Epic Games: v436
Latest unofficial patch by [utpg.org]: v451 (breaks UnrealEd, but a new patch or a fix is being worked on)

One of the Unreal Engine games. See also:

UT2003, the sequel
Unreal Engine Versions

Discussion

El Muerte TDS: I think a bit more info would be nice

CH3Z: Shaping up, but, "...was published in 2003. Some years later..." What year is it again??

Nik: I tried to give a history of UT from a historical point of view, my first ever wiki page, sorry CH3Z I still don't quite get the hang on this. :-)

Tarquin: No worries, Nik. Welcome to the wiki Mistakes aren't a problem here, we correct each other's.

CH3Z: Np Nik, thx for taking the initiative, I just didn't want to change it because I thought you might have more of an idea where you trying to take it then I had. Wanted to give you a welcome to Unreal Wiki in your personal page but I don't see it yet. Anyway, welcome aboard, Nik. :cool:

FragBait: I Wouldn't Use Anything Below:

1 GHz processor, 256 MB Ram, and 1 GB free hard-disk space for all that stuff you download

(for those who haven't figured out im just kidding)

RDGDanClark: A minor edit, I changed the release of UT2003 to "late 2002" Can you guys believe it's almost a year old?

Rasterbator: How about a port to OS X for UnrealEd2? I have been wanting to create maps and textures, but really don't want to buy a Microsoft product (Virtual PC) to do it. I am running UT GOTY edition with 436 patch, and playing on OS X with the latest Beat Preview for OS X (no problems - runs just as well as in OS 9). Anybody know if this is being worked on?

Foxpaw: I don't think there's been any official word on this, however, I believe UnrealEd and the older builds of the engine are essentially unsupported by Epic now. To my knowledge, porting UCC and UnrealEd to Mac and Linux is a very low priority, but on the "eventual" list. However, when they do do so, I strongly suspect it will be the latest version of the editor that they port.

Category To Do