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Unreal (1998 video game)

Unreal is a first-person shooter video game developed by Epic MegaGames and Digital Extremes and published by GT Interactive for Microsoft Windows in May 1998. It was powered by Unreal Engine, an original game engine. The game reached sales of 1.5 million units by 2002.

Unreal
Developer(s)Epic MegaGames
Digital Extremes[a]
Publisher(s)GT Interactive
Producer(s)Jason Schreiber
Greg Williams
Designer(s)James Schmalz
Cliff Bleszinski
Programmer(s)Tim Sweeney
Steve Polge
Erik de Neve
Artist(s)Artur Bialas, Mike Leatham, James Schmalz
Composer(s)Alexander Brandon
Michiel van den Bos
Andrew G. Sega
Dan Gardopée
SeriesUnreal
EngineUnreal Engine
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows, Mac OS
ReleaseMicrosoft Windows
Mac OS
Genre(s)First-person shooter
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer

Since the release of Unreal, the franchise has had one sequel and two different series based on the Unreal universe. One official bonus pack, the Epic-released Fusion Map Pack, can be downloaded free of charge. Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali, developed by Legend Entertainment, was released in June 1999, and added 17 new missions to the single-player campaign of Unreal. Unreal and Return to Na Pali would later be bundled together as Unreal Gold. Additionally, the games were updated to run on the Unreal Tournament version of the game engine.

Plot edit

The player takes on the role of Prisoner 849, aboard the prison spacecraft Vortex Rikers. During transport to a moon-based prison, the ship is pulled to an uncharted planet, before reaching its destination. The ship crash-lands on the lip of a canyon on the planet Na Pali, home of the Nali, a primitive tribal race of four-armed humanoids. The Nali and their planet have been subjugated by the Skaarj, a race of savage yet technologically advanced reptilian humanoids, who also have an army of genetically engineered Brutes and an enslaved race of warriors, known as the Krall. Skaarj troops board the downed Vortex Rikers and kill the remaining survivors, except for Prisoner 849, who manages to find a weapon and escape from the ship.

The planet Na Pali is rich in "Tarydium", a mineral that is found as light blue crystals, possessing a high energy yield and are the reason the Skaarj have invaded. The Vortex Rikers had crashed near one of the many mines and processing facilities that the Skaarj have built. Prisoner 849 travels through the mines, meeting Nali slaves along the way and eventually reaching the ruins of Nali temples, villages and cities, where the extent of the Nali's suffering and exploitation become clear. The player passes through a water temple and a massive arena, where the player must kill a giant beast called a Titan.

Throughout the game, the player stumbles upon the remains of other humans, often with electronic journals that detail their last days and hint toward the cause of their demise. Usually, these tales are of desperate struggles to hide from the Skaarj, or other bloodthirsty inhabitants of the planet. The player never meets another live human, aside from a wounded crew member on the bridge of the prison ship, who gasps and dies immediately. Prisoner 849 is likely the only human alive on the planet Na Pali throughout the duration of the game.

Prisoner 849 continues to make their way through a series of alien installations, a second crashed human spaceship and ancient Nali temples infested with Skaarj troops and their minions, before eventually arriving at the Nali Castle. Inside the castle, the prisoner locates a teleporter that leads to the Skaarj Mothership. The mothership proves to be a vast labyrinth, but Prisoner 849 manages to find and destroy the ship's reactor, whilst fighting their way through hordes of Skaarj. The reactor's destruction plunges the vessel into darkness and after navigating the ship's corridors in the dark, the player finally arrives at the Skaarj Queen's chamber, where they fight and ultimately, kill the Queen. Prisoner 849 jumps into the Queen's personal escape pod, as the mothership disintegrates. Although the prisoner survives the horrors of Na Pali, their escape pod is left to drift in space, with only a slim hope of being found.

Expansion plot edit

The expansion, Return to Na Pali, developed by Legend Entertainment, picks up not long after Unreal's ending; Prisoner 849 is found by a human warship, the UMS Bodega Bay. The Unified Military Services (UMS) conscript the prisoner into service, upon learning their identity, forcing Prisoner 849 to return to Na Pali in order to locate the downed ship UMS Prometheus. There, the prisoner is ordered to retrieve some weapons research. In return, the prisoner will receive a full pardon and transportation back to Earth, though the real plan is revealed to be maintaining the secrecy of the mission, by killing the prisoner immediately after the information is secured.

Upon arriving at the Prometheus, Prisoner 849 finds the secret weapons log, but soon after, they find a working radio communicator nearby. The prisoner listens to a recently recorded and archived conversation between the Bodega Bay and a nearby space station, the UMS Starlight, exposing the military's treachery. As Prisoner 849 transmits the research log, a squad of marines beam on board Prometheus, intending to eliminate the prisoner who manages to escape into a nearby mine system.

Once again, Prisoner 849 is forced to traverse a series of alien facilities and Nali temples, in an attempt to locate another way off the planet. Eventually, the prisoner ends up at another Nali Castle, where a small space shuttle is stored. After fighting through Skaarj, Krall and other monsters, the prisoner battles the final opponent, a Skaarj Warlord, before killing it and managing to take off in the spacecraft. However, the Bodega Bay is waiting in orbit and launches a missile at the prisoner's ship. The prisoner outmanoeuvres the missile, and leads it back to Bodega Bay on a collision course. The large ship is disabled by the ensuing blast, and Prisoner 849 escapes into space.

Development edit

Unreal was jointly developed by Epic MegaGames and Digital Extremes and mostly funded with the proceeds from Epic Pinball, Epic's best selling shareware game.[4][5][6] In the February 1997 issue of Next Generation, lead designer James Schmalz recalled how it started:

I made the terrain first. A Magic Carpet-type terrain ... I was experimenting with a cavern-set, robot-type game, and I progressed to the continuous mesh technique that we have now, so I changed it from caverns to outdoors. By then I had these polygon creatures, like this dragon flying around - that was the first good polygon creature we made up. From there we added buildings, and [lead programmer] Tim [Sweeney] got into making this editor for doing the buildings - after that, it took off ... So I started focusing on the creatures and the artwork, and Tim took over the engine. [Co-designer] Cliff [Bleszinski] came on ... Because the editor was making it so easy to put together the structures, we had the tool to make the indoor areas, so there was less focus on the outdoor stuff.[7]

While the team still had only the outdoor terrain and the dragon in place, Intel invited Epic MegaGames to demonstrate Unreal to them. Following the demonstration, Intel told them about their upcoming MMX instruction set. Sweeney was immediately excited by the possibilities MMX presented, and put together a working MMX version of the rendering code before Epic had even received a chip with MMX.[7]

Originally, Unreal was going to feature a large status bar and centered weapons, similar to Doom and Quake.[8] As development progressed, various levels were cut from development. A few of these levels reappeared in the Return to Na Pali expansion pack. A number of enemies from early versions are present in the released software, but with variations and improvements to their look. One monster that didn't make the cut was a dragon. One of the weapons shown in early screenshots was the "Quadshot" - a four-barreled shotgun; the model remains in-game, while there is no code for the weapon to function (several user-made modifications bring the weapon back in the game). Another weapon shown was a different pistol, however this may have just been an early version of the Automag. At one point, the rifle could fire three shots at once, which is wrongly stated as the alternate fire in the Unreal manual that comes with Unreal Anthology.

 
A screenshot of Unreal released by Epic MegaGames, circa 1995[9]

Initially the game's player character was to be female, but as the number of games with female playable characters increased, the team decided to allow the player to select from a male character and a female character.[8]

In late 1996 GT Interactive secured exclusive global publishing rights to Unreal.[10]

With the game still in development, Epic MegaGames started work on a port for the Nintendo 64DD. Mark Rein stated in an interview that "We still have to get Nintendo's approval on everything, but we're working on it. We're already coding the engine. ... we'll have to reduce the dimensions of the textures, so they'll be scaled down quite a bit, but with the bi-linear filtering, you can get away with much lower resolution textures and it will look just as good".[7] He added that while a port for the standalone Nintendo 64 would probably be possible, the limited storage space of the cartridge format would necessitate heavy compromises to the details on the monsters and the number of unique textures.[7] A Dreamcast port was also planned, and was in fact demoed for the system's capabilities early on its lifecycle, but was canceled when GT Interactive entered financial struggles (one of the reasons they would be purchased by Infogrames in 1999), and a port of Unreal Tournament would take its place in 2001.[11]

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 mods (short for "modifications") 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. A map editor and overall complete modification program called UnrealEd also came with the package.

Unreal's method of creating maps differs in major ways from that of Quake. The bundled UnrealEd map editor uses the Unreal engine to render scenes exactly as they appear in-game, as opposed to external editors like Worldcraft attempting to recreate it with different methods. Whereas Quake maps are compiled from a variety of different components, Unreal maps are inherently editable on the fly. This allows anybody to edit any map that is created, including the maps included with the game.

Graphics edit

The Unreal engine brought a host of graphical improvements rarely seen at that time. Unreal's software renderer allowed software features as rich as the hardware renderers of the time, including colored lighting and even a limited form of texture filtering referred to by Sweeney as an ordered "texture coordinate space" dither.[12] Early pre-release versions of Unreal were based entirely on software rendering.

Unreal was one of the first games to utilize detail texturing. This type of multiple texturing enhances the surfaces of objects with a second texture that shows material detail. When the player stands within a small distance from most surfaces, the detail texture will fade in and make the surface appear much more complex (high-resolution) instead of becoming increasingly blurry.[13] Notable surfaces with these special detail textures included computer monitors, pitted metal surfaces aboard the prison ship, golden metal doors, and stone surfaces within Nali temples. This extra texture layer was not applied to character models. The resulting simulation of material detail on game objects was intended to aid the player's suspension of disbelief. For many years after Unreal's release (and Unreal Tournament's release), detail texturing only worked well with the S3 MeTaL and Glide renderer. It was, in fact, disabled in the Direct3D renderer by default (but could be re-enabled in the Unreal.ini file) due to performance and quality issues caused by the driver, while it was present even on hardware many times more powerful than the original S3 Savage3D and 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics.

Because of Unreal's long development time, the course of development occurred during the emergence and rapid progression of hardware 3D accelerators. Along with the advanced software 3D renderer, Unreal was built to take advantage of the 3Dfx Glide API, which emerged as the dominant interface towards the end of the game's development. When Unreal was finally released, Microsoft's Direct3D API was growing rapidly in popularity and Epic was fairly quick to develop a renderer for their game engine. However, the Direct3D renderer, released initially to support the new Matrox G200, was less capable and slower than the Glide support, especially in the beginning when it was unstable, slow, and had many graphics quality issues.[14] Unreal also had official OpenGL support.

Audio edit

While many game companies went from FM synthesis or General MIDI in the early 1990s to enhanced CD audio and pre-rendered audio, many of the Epic Games used the less common system of module music, composed with a tracker, which used stored PCM sound samples of musical instruments sequenced together to produce music. Epic had been using this technology for other games such as Jazz Jackrabbit and One Must Fall: 2097, which allowed relatively rich music to be stored in files usually smaller than one megabyte.[15] This technology allowed easy implementation of dynamic music for mood changes in Unreal. The Unreal soundtrack was written by MOD music authors Alexander Brandon and Michiel van den Bos with a few selected tracks by Dan Gardopée and Andrew Sega (Straylight Productions ). Unreal's music engine also supports CD audio tracks. The game also made use of the Aureal 3D technology.[16]

Community patch support edit

In July 2000 the official support ended with patch 2.26f by Epic MegaGames. Therefore, with the awareness and permission of Epic, the fan community started the OldUnreal Community patch project based on the original source code in 2008.[17] The latest patch iteration, 2.27j, released in June 23, 2022, includes new graphics rendering like DirectX 9, updated OpenGL, new sound rendering based on OpenAL and fixes many incompatibilities with modern operating systems and hardware.

Mac OS edit

The Mac version was released in parallel with the PC version. It supported RAVE hardware acceleration as well as 3DFX's Voodoo, built-in software rendering and, later on, OpenGL rendering. RAVE acceleration support allowed the game to support hardware 3D acceleration with just about every Mac that included it. It also supported Apple's Game Sprockets.

The last update for the Mac OS port was version 224b, which breaks network compatibility between it and the PC version, as well as lacking support for some user-created content made for 225 and 226f. Westlake Interactive, the company responsible for the port, claimed that previous patches were produced voluntarily in their free time, beyond their contractual obligations.[18] They also stated that they did not receive the code for the 225 patch and that it had become unavailable due to Epic moving on to develop version 226.

Linux edit

An unofficial content port of the single-player maps to Linux was created by several users of icculus.org, which allowed the Unreal single-player game content to be run as a modification for Unreal Tournament.[19][20][21] The online retailer Tux Games at one point sold a box set including the Linux version.[22][23] The 227 community patch contains a full Linux port for Unreal.

Books edit

Two novels titled Hard Crash and Prophet's Power were published, expanding on the premise and story first introduced in Unreal. Prophet's Power, numbered as the second book in the series, is actually a prequel to the first, Hard Crash; thus it is harder for readers to understand what happened in the story. A book called Escape to Na Pali: A Journey to the Unreal was published on June 23, 2014.[24] It is an adventure to the world of Unreal, written by Kaitlin Tremblay and Alan Williamson.[25][26]

Reception edit

Sales edit

In the United States, Unreal debuted in third place on PC Data's computer game sales chart for the week ending May 23, 1998, at an average retail price (ARP) of $50.[27] It climbed to first place the following week, while its ARP dropped to $40.[28] Finishing May as the country's second-highest computer game seller of the month, behind StarCraft,[29] Unreal proceeded to alternate with StarCraft between positions 1 and 2 on the weekly charts through the May 31 – June 27 period.[30][31][32] Jason Ocampo of Computer Games Strategy Plus characterized the games' competition for first place as a "tug-of-war".[32] Unreal ultimately held at #2 behind StarCraft on the monthly chart for June as a whole,[33] and became the United States' 15th-best-selling computer game of 1998's first half.[34]

Unreal maintained a position in PC Data's weekly top 10 from June 28 through August 1.[35][36][37] It continued its streak at second place for July overall,[38] and totaled sales in excess of 120,000 copies in the United States by the end of that month, according to PC Data. IGN described this performance as "a huge hit".[39] In early August, GT Interactive reported that global sales of Unreal had topped 500,000 copies, which contributed to growth at the publisher.[40] The game went on to appear in PC Data's weekly top 10 from August 2 through the week ending September 12, when it fell to #10,[41][42][43][44] and in the monthly top 10 for both August and September.[45][46] After falling to 19th place for October in total, it exited the monthly top 20.[47][48] Ultimately, PC Data declared Unreal the United States' 11th-best-selling computer game during the January–November 1998 period.[49]

In the United States, Unreal finished 1998 as the year's 13th-biggest computer game seller, with sales of 291,300 units and revenues of $10.96 million.[50] Its ARP for the year was $38.[51] According to GameDaily, the game's sales in the United States reached 350,000 units by January 1999.[52] Worldwide sales surpassed one million units by September 1999,[53] and reached 1.5 million copies by November 2002.[54]

Critical response edit

Unreal received positive reviews upon release.[68] Critics praised the graphics, gameplay, music, atmosphere, enemy behavior, and bot support in multiplayer mode, but criticized the lag-ridden online multiplayer mode.[68][69]

Macworld's Michael Gowan wrote: "This 3-D shoot-'em-up reinvigorates a tired genre. Plot, atmosphere, and exploration mix with ferocious enemies to make this game stand out from the pack".[66]

Next Generation reviewed the PC version of the game, rating it five stars out of five, and stated that "Unreal is the single best action game ever to appear on PC".[63] In 2018 CNET praised the game at its 20th anniversary.[70]

Accolades edit

In 1998, PC Gamer US declared Unreal the 13th-best computer game ever released.[71]

List of awards and nominations
Year Publication Category Result Ref.
1998 Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences PC Action Game of the Year Nominated [72]
Computer Games Strategy Plus Action Game of the Year Nominated [73]

Further reading edit

  • Herz, J.C (June 25, 1998). "Holding the Reins of Reality". The New York Times.
  • Keighley, Geoffrey. . GameSpot. Archived from the original on May 19, 2001.
  • Davies, Marsh (September 18, 2012). "Reinstall: Unreal - we go native in Epic Games' forgotten masterpiece". PC Gamer.
  • Smith, Tony (July 13, 2013). "Unreal: Epic's would-be Doom ... er ... Quake killer". The Register.
  • Williamson, Alan (June 22, 2014). "Why Unreal deserves to be remembered alongside Half-Life". Eurogamer.
  • Caldwell, Brendan (June 5, 2018). "A retrospective of Unreal, from the people who made it". Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
  • The Duelist #32[74]

Notes edit

  1. ^ Legend Entertainment developed a mission pack titled Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali.

References edit

  1. ^ "Key Dates". Nottingham Recorder. June 11, 1998. p. 15. Retrieved January 24, 2023. June 12th//Unreal//PC CD ROM - £9
  2. ^ Mullen, Micheal (May 22, 1998). . GameSpot. Archived from the original on October 8, 2000. Retrieved January 10, 2024.
  3. ^ . IGN. September 1, 1998. Archived from the original on April 11, 2000. Retrieved December 6, 2019.
    "Epic MegaGames' blockbuster Unreal is now shipping for the Macintosh...
  4. ^ Lafferty, Michael. . GameZone. Archived from the original on June 13, 2002. Retrieved January 15, 2018.
  5. ^ Kang, Jeff (December 16, 1999). . Games Domain. Archived from the original on October 6, 2000. Retrieved January 15, 2018.
  6. ^ Edwards, Benj (May 25, 2009). "From The Past To The Future: Tim Sweeney Talks". Gamasutra. Retrieved January 15, 2018.
  7. ^ a b c d "An Interview with Epic MegaGames" (PDF). Next Generation. No. 26. Imagine Media. February 1997. pp. 75–76.
  8. ^ a b "NG Alphas: Unreal". Next Generation. No. 26. Imagine Media. February 1997. pp. 68–73.
  9. ^ Lightbown, David (January 9, 2018). . Game Developer. Archived from the original on August 23, 2018. Retrieved February 22, 2022.
  10. ^ "Inside Scoop". GamePro. No. 99. IDG. December 1996. p. 32.
  11. ^ Staff (June 2, 2000). "Did Somebody Say Unreal Tournament on DC?". IGN. Retrieved January 9, 2020.
  12. ^ Yong, Li Sheng. Texturing As In Unreal, flipcode.com, July 10, 2000.
  13. ^ 6.20 Detail Textures, OpenGL.org, August 6, 1999.
  14. ^ MATROX OFFERS SNEAK-PEAK AT UNREAL DIRECT3DPATCH November 13, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, Epic MegaGames, September 24, 1998.
  15. ^ Game Development and Production by Erik Bethke, page 341
  16. ^ Polishuk, Paul (December 1998). 1394 Monthly Newsletter. p. 4.
  17. ^ Meer, Alec (October 12, 2012). "Patchy Like It's 1998: Unreal 1 Updated". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved December 21, 2012. The list of fixes upon fixes are too long to mention here, but the essential purpose of v227 is to add DirectX9 and OpenAL support as well as mending everything that needs mending. Epic are aware of and permit the patch ...
  18. ^ . October 13, 1999. Archived from the original on October 13, 1999.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  19. ^ "Unreal Gold for Linux".
  20. ^ Unreal Gold (Linux) December 20, 2009, at the Wayback Machine - Gamespy
  21. ^ Gaming and Linux in 2003 - LinuxHardware.org
  22. ^ Unreal July 16, 2011, at the Wayback Machine - Tux Games
  23. ^ Unreal Available at Tux Games June 14, 2011, at the Wayback Machine - LinuxGames
  24. ^ "Introducing Escape to Na Pali, and our new editor!". Five out of Ten. June 13, 2014. Retrieved August 16, 2014.
  25. ^ "Escape to Na Pali". Five out of Ten. June 2014. Retrieved August 16, 2014.
  26. ^ Kaitlin Tremblay and Alan Williamson (July 22, 2014). "The Original Unreal Got Aliens Right". Kotaku. Retrieved August 16, 2014.
  27. ^ Ocampo, Jason (June 3, 1998). . Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on April 6, 2005.
  28. ^ Ocampo, Jason (June 12, 1998). . Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on April 6, 2005.
  29. ^ Ocampo, Jason (June 18, 1998). . Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on May 2, 2005.
  30. ^ Ocampo, Jason (June 17, 1998). . Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on April 6, 2005.
  31. ^ Ocampo, Jason (June 23, 1998). . Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on May 15, 2005.
  32. ^ a b Ocampo, Jason (July 9, 1998). . Archived from the original on April 6, 2005.
  33. ^ Ocampo, Jason (21 July 1998). . Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on 2 May 2005.
  34. ^ Ocampo, Jason (17 August 1998). . Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on 6 April 2005.
  35. ^ Ocampo, Jason (July 22, 1998). . Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on April 6, 2005.
  36. ^ Ocampo, Jason (August 4, 1998). . Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on April 6, 2005.
  37. ^ Mayer, Robert (August 13, 1998). . Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on May 2, 2005.
  38. ^ Ocampo, Jason (August 18, 1998). . Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on April 6, 2005.
  39. ^ IGN Staff (September 3, 1998). . IGN. Archived from the original on April 11, 2000. Retrieved May 24, 2018.
  40. ^ Staff (August 5, 1998). . GameSpot. Archived from the original on March 5, 2000.
  41. ^ Ocampo, Jason (August 27, 1998). . Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on February 8, 2005.
  42. ^ Ocampo, Jason (September 10, 1998). . Computer Game Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on May 15, 2005.
  43. ^ Hulsey, Joel (September 18, 1998). . Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on April 7, 2005.
  44. ^ Staff (September 25, 1998). . IGN. Archived from the original on June 22, 2000.
  45. ^ GamerX (25 September 1998). . CNET Gamecenter. Archived from the original on 17 August 2000.
  46. ^ Staff (27 October 1998). . GameSpot. Archived from the original on 9 March 2000.
  47. ^ Feldman, Curt (13 November 1998). . GameSpot. Archived from the original on 11 April 2000.
  48. ^ Mayer, Robert (13 December 1998). . Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on 6 April 2005.
  49. ^ IGN Staff (January 4, 1999). . IGN. Archived from the original on September 1, 2000. Retrieved May 31, 2018.
  50. ^ Staff (April 1999). "The Numbers Game". PC Gamer US. 6 (4): 50.
  51. ^ IGN Staff (January 27, 1999). . IGN. Archived from the original on June 13, 2000. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
  52. ^ Staff (January 1999). . GameDaily. Archived from the original on April 25, 2001. Retrieved July 18, 2018.
  53. ^ Staff (September 22, 1999). . MeriStation (in Spanish). Archived from the original on May 29, 2000.
  54. ^ Staff (November 12, 2002). "Made-in-Canada game is Unreal hit". The Globe and Mail. from the original on August 6, 2018.
  55. ^ . GameRankings. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on December 9, 2019. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
  56. ^ L. House, Michael. . AllGame. All Media Network. Archived from the original on November 14, 2014. Retrieved October 18, 2015.
  57. ^ Fulljames, Stephen (August 15, 2001). Computer and Video Games. Archived from the original on January 10, 2007. Retrieved September 14, 2015.
  58. ^ . Edge. July 1, 1998. Archived from the original on May 31, 2013. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
  59. ^ Klett, Steve (January 1, 2000). . GamePro. International Data Group. Archived from the original on June 20, 2004. Retrieved September 14, 2015.
  60. ^ Anderson, Tom (June 5, 2004). "Unreal Review, Right game, wrong time". Game Revolution. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
  61. ^ Shamma, Tahsin (June 10, 1998). "Unreal Review, What gives Unreal an edge is how these differences, while not always positive, distinguish it from the legions of other 3D shooters". GameSpot. CBS Interactive. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
  62. ^ Harris, Craig (August 12, 1998). "Unreal Review, As corny as it sounds, the title says it all". IGN. Ziff Davis. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
  63. ^ a b "Finals". Next Generation. No. 44. Imagine Media. August 1998. pp. 84–85.
  64. ^ Owen, Steve. . PC Gamer. Archived from the original on December 2, 2000. Retrieved September 14, 2015.
  65. ^ PCZone (August 13, 2001). . Computer and Video Games. Archived from the original on March 11, 2007. Retrieved September 14, 2015.
  66. ^ a b Gowan, Michael (February 1999). . Macworld. Archived from the original on August 10, 2001.
  67. ^ Wadleigh, Matt (March 19, 2003). . Thunderbolt. Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
  68. ^ a b "Unreal is Real; GT Interactive, Epic MegaGames and Digital Extremes Ship the Year's most Eagerly Anticipated PC Game". Business Wire: 1. May 22, 1998 – via ProQuest.[verification needed]
  69. ^ Mowatt, Todd; Snider, Mike; Ham, Tom (July 2, 1998). "Banjo-Kazooie,' 'Unreal' make Worlds Come Alive". USA Today. p. 09D – via ProQuest.[verification needed]
  70. ^ "Free frags: Grab Unreal Gold for free today to celebrate the game's 20th anniversary". CNET. from the original on May 31, 2023.
  71. ^ The PC Gamer Editors (October 1998). "The 50 Best Games Ever". PC Gamer US. 5 (10): 86, 87, 89, 90, 92, 98, 101, 102, 109, 110, 113, 114, 117, 118, 125, 126, 129, 130. {{cite journal}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  72. ^ . Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Archived from the original on November 4, 1999.
  73. ^ Staff (February 11, 1999). . Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on February 3, 2005.
  74. ^ "The Duelist # 32". December 1998.

External links edit


unreal, 1998, video, game, unreal, first, person, shooter, video, game, developed, epic, megagames, digital, extremes, published, interactive, microsoft, windows, 1998, powered, unreal, engine, original, game, engine, game, reached, sales, million, units, 2002. Unreal is a first person shooter video game developed by Epic MegaGames and Digital Extremes and published by GT Interactive for Microsoft Windows in May 1998 It was powered by Unreal Engine an original game engine The game reached sales of 1 5 million units by 2002 UnrealDeveloper s Epic MegaGamesDigital Extremes a Publisher s GT InteractiveProducer s Jason SchreiberGreg WilliamsDesigner s James SchmalzCliff BleszinskiProgrammer s Tim SweeneySteve PolgeErik de NeveArtist s Artur Bialas Mike Leatham James SchmalzComposer s Alexander BrandonMichiel van den BosAndrew G SegaDan GardopeeSeriesUnrealEngineUnreal EnginePlatform s Microsoft Windows Mac OSReleaseMicrosoft WindowsNA May 22 1998 2 UK June 12 1998 1 Mac OSNA September 1 1998 3 Genre s First person shooterMode s Single player multiplayer Since the release of Unreal the franchise has had one sequel and two different series based on the Unreal universe One official bonus pack the Epic released Fusion Map Pack can be downloaded free of charge Unreal Mission Pack Return to Na Pali developed by Legend Entertainment was released in June 1999 and added 17 new missions to the single player campaign of Unreal Unreal and Return to Na Pali would later be bundled together as Unreal Gold Additionally the games were updated to run on the Unreal Tournament version of the game engine Contents 1 Plot 1 1 Expansion plot 2 Development 2 1 Graphics 2 2 Audio 2 3 Community patch support 2 4 Mac OS 2 5 Linux 3 Books 4 Reception 4 1 Sales 4 2 Critical response 4 3 Accolades 5 Further reading 6 Notes 7 References 8 External linksPlot editThe player takes on the role of Prisoner 849 aboard the prison spacecraft Vortex Rikers During transport to a moon based prison the ship is pulled to an uncharted planet before reaching its destination The ship crash lands on the lip of a canyon on the planet Na Pali home of the Nali a primitive tribal race of four armed humanoids The Nali and their planet have been subjugated by the Skaarj a race of savage yet technologically advanced reptilian humanoids who also have an army of genetically engineered Brutes and an enslaved race of warriors known as the Krall Skaarj troops board the downed Vortex Rikers and kill the remaining survivors except for Prisoner 849 who manages to find a weapon and escape from the ship The planet Na Pali is rich in Tarydium a mineral that is found as light blue crystals possessing a high energy yield and are the reason the Skaarj have invaded The Vortex Rikers had crashed near one of the many mines and processing facilities that the Skaarj have built Prisoner 849 travels through the mines meeting Nali slaves along the way and eventually reaching the ruins of Nali temples villages and cities where the extent of the Nali s suffering and exploitation become clear The player passes through a water temple and a massive arena where the player must kill a giant beast called a Titan Throughout the game the player stumbles upon the remains of other humans often with electronic journals that detail their last days and hint toward the cause of their demise Usually these tales are of desperate struggles to hide from the Skaarj or other bloodthirsty inhabitants of the planet The player never meets another live human aside from a wounded crew member on the bridge of the prison ship who gasps and dies immediately Prisoner 849 is likely the only human alive on the planet Na Pali throughout the duration of the game Prisoner 849 continues to make their way through a series of alien installations a second crashed human spaceship and ancient Nali temples infested with Skaarj troops and their minions before eventually arriving at the Nali Castle Inside the castle the prisoner locates a teleporter that leads to the Skaarj Mothership The mothership proves to be a vast labyrinth but Prisoner 849 manages to find and destroy the ship s reactor whilst fighting their way through hordes of Skaarj The reactor s destruction plunges the vessel into darkness and after navigating the ship s corridors in the dark the player finally arrives at the Skaarj Queen s chamber where they fight and ultimately kill the Queen Prisoner 849 jumps into the Queen s personal escape pod as the mothership disintegrates Although the prisoner survives the horrors of Na Pali their escape pod is left to drift in space with only a slim hope of being found Expansion plot edit The expansion Return to Na Pali developed by Legend Entertainment picks up not long after Unreal s ending Prisoner 849 is found by a human warship the UMS Bodega Bay The Unified Military Services UMS conscript the prisoner into service upon learning their identity forcing Prisoner 849 to return to Na Pali in order to locate the downed ship UMS Prometheus There the prisoner is ordered to retrieve some weapons research In return the prisoner will receive a full pardon and transportation back to Earth though the real plan is revealed to be maintaining the secrecy of the mission by killing the prisoner immediately after the information is secured Upon arriving at the Prometheus Prisoner 849 finds the secret weapons log but soon after they find a working radio communicator nearby The prisoner listens to a recently recorded and archived conversation between the Bodega Bay and a nearby space station the UMS Starlight exposing the military s treachery As Prisoner 849 transmits the research log a squad of marines beam on board Prometheus intending to eliminate the prisoner who manages to escape into a nearby mine system Once again Prisoner 849 is forced to traverse a series of alien facilities and Nali temples in an attempt to locate another way off the planet Eventually the prisoner ends up at another Nali Castle where a small space shuttle is stored After fighting through Skaarj Krall and other monsters the prisoner battles the final opponent a Skaarj Warlord before killing it and managing to take off in the spacecraft However the Bodega Bay is waiting in orbit and launches a missile at the prisoner s ship The prisoner outmanoeuvres the missile and leads it back to Bodega Bay on a collision course The large ship is disabled by the ensuing blast and Prisoner 849 escapes into space Development editUnreal was jointly developed by Epic MegaGames and Digital Extremes and mostly funded with the proceeds from Epic Pinball Epic s best selling shareware game 4 5 6 In the February 1997 issue of Next Generation lead designer James Schmalz recalled how it started I made the terrain first A Magic Carpet type terrain I was experimenting with a cavern set robot type game and I progressed to the continuous mesh technique that we have now so I changed it from caverns to outdoors By then I had these polygon creatures like this dragon flying around that was the first good polygon creature we made up From there we added buildings and lead programmer Tim Sweeney got into making this editor for doing the buildings after that it took off So I started focusing on the creatures and the artwork and Tim took over the engine Co designer Cliff Bleszinski came on Because the editor was making it so easy to put together the structures we had the tool to make the indoor areas so there was less focus on the outdoor stuff 7 While the team still had only the outdoor terrain and the dragon in place Intel invited Epic MegaGames to demonstrate Unreal to them Following the demonstration Intel told them about their upcoming MMX instruction set Sweeney was immediately excited by the possibilities MMX presented and put together a working MMX version of the rendering code before Epic had even received a chip with MMX 7 Originally Unreal was going to feature a large status bar and centered weapons similar to Doom and Quake 8 As development progressed various levels were cut from development A few of these levels reappeared in the Return to Na Pali expansion pack A number of enemies from early versions are present in the released software but with variations and improvements to their look One monster that didn t make the cut was a dragon One of the weapons shown in early screenshots was the Quadshot a four barreled shotgun the model remains in game while there is no code for the weapon to function several user made modifications bring the weapon back in the game Another weapon shown was a different pistol however this may have just been an early version of the Automag At one point the rifle could fire three shots at once which is wrongly stated as the alternate fire in the Unreal manual that comes with Unreal Anthology nbsp A screenshot of Unreal released by Epic MegaGames circa 1995 9 Initially the game s player character was to be female but as the number of games with female playable characters increased the team decided to allow the player to select from a male character and a female character 8 In late 1996 GT Interactive secured exclusive global publishing rights to Unreal 10 With the game still in development Epic MegaGames started work on a port for the Nintendo 64DD Mark Rein stated in an interview that We still have to get Nintendo s approval on everything but we re working on it We re already coding the engine we ll have to reduce the dimensions of the textures so they ll be scaled down quite a bit but with the bi linear filtering you can get away with much lower resolution textures and it will look just as good 7 He added that while a port for the standalone Nintendo 64 would probably be possible the limited storage space of the cartridge format would necessitate heavy compromises to the details on the monsters and the number of unique textures 7 A Dreamcast port was also planned and was in fact demoed for the system s capabilities early on its lifecycle but was canceled when GT Interactive entered financial struggles one of the reasons they would be purchased by Infogrames in 1999 and a port of Unreal Tournament would take its place in 2001 11 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 mods short for modifications 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 A map editor and overall complete modification program called UnrealEd also came with the package Unreal s method of creating maps differs in major ways from that of Quake The bundled UnrealEd map editor uses the Unreal engine to render scenes exactly as they appear in game as opposed to external editors like Worldcraft attempting to recreate it with different methods Whereas Quake maps are compiled from a variety of different components Unreal maps are inherently editable on the fly This allows anybody to edit any map that is created including the maps included with the game Graphics edit The Unreal engine brought a host of graphical improvements rarely seen at that time Unreal s software renderer allowed software features as rich as the hardware renderers of the time including colored lighting and even a limited form of texture filtering referred to by Sweeney as an ordered texture coordinate space dither 12 Early pre release versions of Unreal were based entirely on software rendering Unreal was one of the first games to utilize detail texturing This type of multiple texturing enhances the surfaces of objects with a second texture that shows material detail When the player stands within a small distance from most surfaces the detail texture will fade in and make the surface appear much more complex high resolution instead of becoming increasingly blurry 13 Notable surfaces with these special detail textures included computer monitors pitted metal surfaces aboard the prison ship golden metal doors and stone surfaces within Nali temples This extra texture layer was not applied to character models The resulting simulation of material detail on game objects was intended to aid the player s suspension of disbelief For many years after Unreal s release and Unreal Tournament s release detail texturing only worked well with the S3 MeTaL and Glide renderer It was in fact disabled in the Direct3D renderer by default but could be re enabled in the Unreal ini file due to performance and quality issues caused by the driver while it was present even on hardware many times more powerful than the original S3 Savage3D and 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics Because of Unreal s long development time the course of development occurred during the emergence and rapid progression of hardware 3D accelerators Along with the advanced software 3D renderer Unreal was built to take advantage of the 3Dfx Glide API which emerged as the dominant interface towards the end of the game s development When Unreal was finally released Microsoft s Direct3D API was growing rapidly in popularity and Epic was fairly quick to develop a renderer for their game engine However the Direct3D renderer released initially to support the new Matrox G200 was less capable and slower than the Glide support especially in the beginning when it was unstable slow and had many graphics quality issues 14 Unreal also had official OpenGL support Audio edit nbsp Unreal Introduction theme Flight Castle source source 31 second sample from the intro theme of Unreal written by Alexander Brandon Problems playing this file See media help While many game companies went from FM synthesis or General MIDI in the early 1990s to enhanced CD audio and pre rendered audio many of the Epic Games used the less common system of module music composed with a tracker which used stored PCM sound samples of musical instruments sequenced together to produce music Epic had been using this technology for other games such as Jazz Jackrabbit and One Must Fall 2097 which allowed relatively rich music to be stored in files usually smaller than one megabyte 15 This technology allowed easy implementation of dynamic music for mood changes in Unreal The Unreal soundtrack was written by MOD music authors Alexander Brandon and Michiel van den Bos with a few selected tracks by Dan Gardopee and Andrew Sega Straylight Productions Unreal s music engine also supports CD audio tracks The game also made use of the Aureal 3D technology 16 Community patch support edit In July 2000 the official support ended with patch 2 26f by Epic MegaGames Therefore with the awareness and permission of Epic the fan community started the OldUnreal Community patch project based on the original source code in 2008 17 The latest patch iteration 2 27j released in June 23 2022 includes new graphics rendering like DirectX 9 updated OpenGL new sound rendering based on OpenAL and fixes many incompatibilities with modern operating systems and hardware Mac OS edit The Mac version was released in parallel with the PC version It supported RAVE hardware acceleration as well as 3DFX s Voodoo built in software rendering and later on OpenGL rendering RAVE acceleration support allowed the game to support hardware 3D acceleration with just about every Mac that included it It also supported Apple s Game Sprockets The last update for the Mac OS port was version 224b which breaks network compatibility between it and the PC version as well as lacking support for some user created content made for 225 and 226f Westlake Interactive the company responsible for the port claimed that previous patches were produced voluntarily in their free time beyond their contractual obligations 18 They also stated that they did not receive the code for the 225 patch and that it had become unavailable due to Epic moving on to develop version 226 Linux edit An unofficial content port of the single player maps to Linux was created by several users of icculus org which allowed the Unreal single player game content to be run as a modification for Unreal Tournament 19 20 21 The online retailer Tux Games at one point sold a box set including the Linux version 22 23 The 227 community patch contains a full Linux port for Unreal Books editTwo novels titled Hard Crash and Prophet s Power were published expanding on the premise and story first introduced in Unreal Prophet s Power numbered as the second book in the series is actually a prequel to the first Hard Crash thus it is harder for readers to understand what happened in the story A book called Escape to Na Pali A Journey to the Unreal was published on June 23 2014 24 It is an adventure to the world of Unreal written by Kaitlin Tremblay and Alan Williamson 25 26 Reception editSales edit In the United States Unreal debuted in third place on PC Data s computer game sales chart for the week ending May 23 1998 at an average retail price ARP of 50 27 It climbed to first place the following week while its ARP dropped to 40 28 Finishing May as the country s second highest computer game seller of the month behind StarCraft 29 Unreal proceeded to alternate with StarCraft between positions 1 and 2 on the weekly charts through the May 31 June 27 period 30 31 32 Jason Ocampo of Computer Games Strategy Plus characterized the games competition for first place as a tug of war 32 Unreal ultimately held at 2 behind StarCraft on the monthly chart for June as a whole 33 and became the United States 15th best selling computer game of 1998 s first half 34 Unreal maintained a position in PC Data s weekly top 10 from June 28 through August 1 35 36 37 It continued its streak at second place for July overall 38 and totaled sales in excess of 120 000 copies in the United States by the end of that month according to PC Data IGN described this performance as a huge hit 39 In early August GT Interactive reported that global sales of Unreal had topped 500 000 copies which contributed to growth at the publisher 40 The game went on to appear in PC Data s weekly top 10 from August 2 through the week ending September 12 when it fell to 10 41 42 43 44 and in the monthly top 10 for both August and September 45 46 After falling to 19th place for October in total it exited the monthly top 20 47 48 Ultimately PC Data declared Unreal the United States 11th best selling computer game during the January November 1998 period 49 In the United States Unreal finished 1998 as the year s 13th biggest computer game seller with sales of 291 300 units and revenues of 10 96 million 50 Its ARP for the year was 38 51 According to GameDaily the game s sales in the United States reached 350 000 units by January 1999 52 Worldwide sales surpassed one million units by September 1999 53 and reached 1 5 million copies by November 2002 54 Critical response edit This section needs expansion You can help by adding to it January 2015 ReceptionAggregate scoreAggregatorScoreGameRankings89 55 Review scoresPublicationScoreAllGame nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp 56 Computer and Video Games9 10 57 Edge8 10 58 GamePro nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp 59 GameRevolutionB 60 GameSpot8 4 10 61 IGN9 10 62 Next Generation nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp 63 PC Gamer UK 94 100 64 PC Zone9 3 10 65 Macworld nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp 66 Thunderbolt9 10 67 Unreal received positive reviews upon release 68 Critics praised the graphics gameplay music atmosphere enemy behavior and bot support in multiplayer mode but criticized the lag ridden online multiplayer mode 68 69 Macworld s Michael Gowan wrote This 3 D shoot em up reinvigorates a tired genre Plot atmosphere and exploration mix with ferocious enemies to make this game stand out from the pack 66 Next Generation reviewed the PC version of the game rating it five stars out of five and stated that Unreal is the single best action game ever to appear on PC 63 In 2018 CNET praised the game at its 20th anniversary 70 Accolades edit In 1998 PC Gamer US declared Unreal the 13th best computer game ever released 71 List of awards and nominations Year Publication Category Result Ref 1998 Academy of Interactive Arts amp Sciences PC Action Game of the Year Nominated 72 Computer Games Strategy Plus Action Game of the Year Nominated 73 Further reading editHerz J C June 25 1998 Holding the Reins of Reality The New York Times Keighley Geoffrey Blinded By Reality The True Story Behind the Creation of Unreal GameSpot Archived from the original on May 19 2001 Davies Marsh September 18 2012 Reinstall Unreal we go native in Epic Games forgotten masterpiece PC Gamer Smith Tony July 13 2013 Unreal Epic s would be Doom er Quake killer The Register Williamson Alan June 22 2014 Why Unreal deserves to be remembered alongside Half Life Eurogamer Caldwell Brendan June 5 2018 A retrospective of Unreal from the people who made it Rock Paper Shotgun The Duelist 32 74 Notes edit Legend Entertainment developed a mission pack titled Unreal Mission Pack Return to Na Pali References edit Key Dates Nottingham Recorder June 11 1998 p 15 Retrieved January 24 2023 June 12th Unreal PC CD ROM 9 Mullen Micheal May 22 1998 Unreal s Special Delivery GameSpot Archived from the original on October 8 2000 Retrieved January 10 2024 News Briefs IGN September 1 1998 Archived from the original on April 11 2000 Retrieved December 6 2019 Epic MegaGames blockbuster Unreal is now shipping for the Macintosh Lafferty Michael Digital Extremes moves from the days of shareware programs to set the mark in mainstream gaming GameZone Archived from the original on June 13 2002 Retrieved January 15 2018 Kang Jeff December 16 1999 Digital Extremes James Schmalz Interview Games Domain Archived from the original on October 6 2000 Retrieved January 15 2018 Edwards Benj May 25 2009 From The Past To The Future Tim Sweeney Talks Gamasutra Retrieved January 15 2018 a b c d An Interview with Epic MegaGames PDF Next Generation No 26 Imagine Media February 1997 pp 75 76 a b NG Alphas Unreal Next Generation No 26 Imagine Media February 1997 pp 68 73 Lightbown David January 9 2018 Classic Tools Retrospective Tim Sweeney on the first version of the Unreal Editor Game Developer Archived from the original on August 23 2018 Retrieved February 22 2022 Inside Scoop GamePro No 99 IDG December 1996 p 32 Staff June 2 2000 Did Somebody Say Unreal Tournament on DC IGN Retrieved January 9 2020 Yong Li Sheng Texturing As In Unreal flipcode com July 10 2000 6 20 Detail Textures OpenGL org August 6 1999 MATROX OFFERS SNEAK PEAK AT UNREAL DIRECT3DPATCH Archived November 13 2006 at the Wayback Machine Epic MegaGames September 24 1998 Game Development and Production by Erik Bethke page 341 Polishuk Paul December 1998 1394 Monthly Newsletter p 4 Meer Alec October 12 2012 Patchy Like It s 1998 Unreal 1 Updated Rock Paper Shotgun Retrieved December 21 2012 The list of fixes upon fixes are too long to mention here but the essential purpose of v227 is to add DirectX9 and OpenAL support as well as mending everything that needs mending Epic are aware of and permit the patch Westlake Interactive October 13 1999 Archived from the original on October 13 1999 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint bot original URL status unknown link Unreal Gold for Linux Unreal Gold Linux Archived December 20 2009 at the Wayback Machine Gamespy Gaming and Linux in 2003 LinuxHardware org Unreal Archived July 16 2011 at the Wayback Machine Tux Games Unreal Available at Tux Games Archived June 14 2011 at the Wayback Machine LinuxGames Introducing Escape to Na Pali and our new editor Five out of Ten June 13 2014 Retrieved August 16 2014 Escape to Na Pali Five out of Ten June 2014 Retrieved August 16 2014 Kaitlin Tremblay and Alan Williamson July 22 2014 The Original Unreal Got Aliens Right Kotaku Retrieved August 16 2014 Ocampo Jason June 3 1998 The top 10 titles for the week of May 17 Computer Games Strategy Plus Archived from the original on April 6 2005 Ocampo Jason June 12 1998 The top 10 titles for the week of May 24 Computer Games Strategy Plus Archived from the original on April 6 2005 Ocampo Jason June 18 1998 StarCraft tops monthly PC game chart again Computer Games Strategy Plus Archived from the original on May 2 2005 Ocampo Jason June 17 1998 The top 10 titles for the week of May 31 Computer Games Strategy Plus Archived from the original on April 6 2005 Ocampo Jason June 23 1998 The top 10 titles for the week of June 7 Computer Games Strategy Plus Archived from the original on May 15 2005 a b Ocampo Jason July 9 1998 The battle between StarCraft and Unreal for No 1 continues Archived from the original on April 6 2005 Ocampo Jason 21 July 1998 StarCraft scores a hat trick with its third month at No 1 Computer Games Strategy Plus Archived from the original on 2 May 2005 Ocampo Jason 17 August 1998 Sales rankings for the first six months of 1998 Computer Games Strategy Plus Archived from the original on 6 April 2005 Ocampo Jason July 22 1998 Myst drops off the weekly chart Computer Games Strategy Plus Archived from the original on April 6 2005 Ocampo Jason August 4 1998 The return of Myst Computer Games Strategy Plus Archived from the original on April 6 2005 Mayer Robert August 13 1998 The return of Riven Computer Games Strategy Plus Archived from the original on May 2 2005 Ocampo Jason August 18 1998 SWAT 2 debuts at No 5 Computer Games Strategy Plus Archived from the original on April 6 2005 IGN Staff September 3 1998 Unreal to Get TV Push IGN Archived from the original on April 11 2000 Retrieved May 24 2018 Staff August 5 1998 GT Numbers Strong GameSpot Archived from the original on March 5 2000 Ocampo Jason August 27 1998 Deer Hunter knocks StarCraft out of No 1 Computer Games Strategy Plus Archived from the original on February 8 2005 Ocampo Jason September 10 1998 Diablo takes the No 1 position Computer Game Strategy Plus Archived from the original on May 15 2005 Hulsey Joel September 18 1998 PC Data for August 30 September 5 Computer Games Strategy Plus Archived from the original on April 7 2005 Staff September 25 1998 Best Selling PC Games IGN Archived from the original on June 22 2000 GamerX 25 September 1998 August s PC Best Sellers CNET Gamecenter Archived from the original on 17 August 2000 Staff 27 October 1998 PC Data Hit List for September GameSpot Archived from the original on 9 March 2000 Feldman Curt 13 November 1998 Top Selling PC Games for October GameSpot Archived from the original on 11 April 2000 Mayer Robert 13 December 1998 November Belongs to Deer Hunter 2 3D Computer Games Strategy Plus Archived from the original on 6 April 2005 IGN Staff January 4 1999 Best Selling Games of 1998 IGN Archived from the original on September 1 2000 Retrieved May 31 2018 Staff April 1999 The Numbers Game PC Gamer US 6 4 50 IGN Staff January 27 1999 The Year s Best Selling Games IGN Archived from the original on June 13 2000 Retrieved July 2 2018 Staff January 1999 GameDAILY Interviews ION Storm s John Romero GameDaily Archived from the original on April 25 2001 Retrieved July 18 2018 Staff September 22 1999 Epic espera vender mas de un millon de Unreal Tournament MeriStation in Spanish Archived from the original on May 29 2000 Staff November 12 2002 Made in Canada game is Unreal hit The Globe and Mail Archived from the original on August 6 2018 Unreal for PC GameRankings CBS Interactive Archived from the original on December 9 2019 Retrieved October 4 2014 L House Michael Unreal Review AllGame All Media Network Archived from the original on November 14 2014 Retrieved October 18 2015 Fulljames Stephen August 15 2001 Unreal Review Time to upgrade that P200 already Computer and Video Games Archived from the original on January 10 2007 Retrieved September 14 2015 Unreal Review Edge July 1 1998 Archived from the original on May 31 2013 Retrieved October 4 2014 Klett Steve January 1 2000 Unreal Review GamePro International Data Group Archived from the original on June 20 2004 Retrieved September 14 2015 Anderson Tom June 5 2004 Unreal Review Right game wrong time Game Revolution Retrieved October 4 2014 Shamma Tahsin June 10 1998 Unreal Review What gives Unreal an edge is how these differences while not always positive distinguish it from the legions of other 3D shooters GameSpot CBS Interactive Retrieved October 4 2014 Harris Craig August 12 1998 Unreal Review As corny as it sounds the title says it all IGN Ziff Davis Retrieved October 4 2014 a b Finals Next Generation No 44 Imagine Media August 1998 pp 84 85 Owen Steve Unreal Review PC Gamer Archived from the original on December 2 2000 Retrieved September 14 2015 PCZone August 13 2001 Unreal Review Computer and Video Games Archived from the original on March 11 2007 Retrieved September 14 2015 a b Gowan Michael February 1999 Name Your Game From Goofy to Gory Macworld Reviews 48 Ways to Play Macworld Archived from the original on August 10 2001 Wadleigh Matt March 19 2003 Unreal PC Review Thunderbolt Archived from the original on October 6 2014 Retrieved October 4 2014 a b Unreal is Real GT Interactive Epic MegaGames and Digital Extremes Ship the Year s most Eagerly Anticipated PC Game Business Wire 1 May 22 1998 via ProQuest verification needed Mowatt Todd Snider Mike Ham Tom July 2 1998 Banjo Kazooie Unreal make Worlds Come Alive USA Today p 09D via ProQuest verification needed Free frags Grab Unreal Gold for free today to celebrate the game s 20th anniversary CNET Archived from the original on May 31 2023 The PC Gamer Editors October 1998 The 50 Best Games Ever PC Gamer US 5 10 86 87 89 90 92 98 101 102 109 110 113 114 117 118 125 126 129 130 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a author has generic name help Second Interactive Achievement Awards Personal Computer Academy of Interactive Arts amp Sciences Archived from the original on November 4 1999 Staff February 11 1999 The Best of 1998 Computer Games Strategy Plus Archived from the original on February 3 2005 The Duelist 32 December 1998 External links editwww unreal com Official Webpage archived by Archive org on March 31 2001 Unreal at MobyGames Unreal on PCGamingWiki Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Unreal 1998 video game amp oldid 1214727731, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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