Epic Games has given the OK for their 1998 shooter Unreal to 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 for Unreal Tournament to 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 the most memorable multiplayer FPS maps of all time , Facing Worlds). Epic gave permission for this very recently, say fan group Old Unreal (as spotted by the folks on ResetEra ).
That fan site are leading the way in making the now-free games easier to download and install. Archive.org is great, but it's not always the most user friendly of libraries.
So the gang of Skaarj custodians have created two installers that will do everything for you. Here's one for Unreal Gold and one for Unreal Tournament . 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.
