Unreal
Unreal is a single player first-person shooter computer game which was published on Memorial Day 1998 by Epic Games. It was powered by the Unreal engine which had been in development for over three years before this game was released.
Unreal Tournament (Capture the Flag)
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2 The Unreal Tournament series 3 Release Dates of Unreal titles 4 Further information |
The Unreal game engine was seen as a major rival to id Software's Quake engine, and the Unreal game itself was considered to be technically superior to the Quake and Quake II titles which were out on the market at the same time. Since Unreal came packaged with its own scripting language called UnrealScript, it soon developed a large community on the Internet which was able to add new modifications (also called mods) in order to change or enhance gameplay. This feature greatly added to the overall longevity of the product and provided an incentive for new development.
Unreal Tournament 2003
Epic Games' 1999 follow-up title was called Unreal Tournament and focused mainly on multiplayer action: It was launched in direct competition to id's Quake III Arena.
Unreal and Unreal Tournament both had sequels released in 2002 entitled Unreal II and Unreal Tournament 2003 which offered much improved graphics and gameplay. Unreal Tournament 2003 had a name change from the expected Unreal Tournament II in order to imitate traditional sports-based video games where annual releases are typical.
As part of Epic Games' strategy of porting the Unreal engine to other platforms, Unreal Championship was released in November 2002 for the Xbox.
On February 11, 2004, the demo for Unreal Tournament 2004 was made available for download over the internet and included five maps for the following game-types: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Bombing Run, Assault, and Onslaught. Within a few hours of its release it had become one of the most popular online games. The full version was made available on March 18, 2004 and could be purchased as either six CDs or on two DVDs (containing both the game and an extra disk of bonus content) as part of the "Special Edition" release (which was completely sold-out in a very short space of time - There were only 60,000 copies made for global distribution). It was later released, on 13 April, 2004, as a DVD Edition containing both of the Special Edition DVDs, but without the metal box covering & headset. It expanded on the team-based theme of its predecessor with the reintroduction of Assault (last seen in Unreal Tournament); the addition of a new game-type called Onslaught; and the inclusion of several futuristic vehicles. The game featured the innovation of built-in voice-comms and contained over one hundred separate maps.
Unreal Tournament 2004
Early development
The Unreal Tournament series
Release Dates of Unreal titles
Further information