Two Classic Unreal Games Are Now Free On Internet Archive And Epic Is Cool With It

Today, the Unreal game engine is everywhere, but it debuted in an iconic, eponymous shooter in 1998. The original Unreal, and the multiplayer followup Unreal Tournament, have maintained a cult following all these years, and now they've got a new lease on life. You can download either of these games from the Internet Archive, and Epic Games is totally cool with it.

An online community for Unreal fans, known as Old Unreal, has long provided a place for fans to gather and tinker with old builds of the games. Late last month, Old Unreal announced new installers for Unreal and Unreal Tournament to streamline installation on modern versions of Windows. It claimed Epic was on board with this, and the company has now confirmed it.

Both games have a sci-fi vibe, pitting you against various alien enemies. The 1998 Unreal was designed by Cliff Bleszinski of Gears of War fame, and the lead programmer was none other than current billionaire CEO of Epic, Tim Sweeny. Unreal is a single-player game, but the follow-up Unreal Tournament (1999) is an online multiplayer experience. Sadly, Epic ended all official support for the game in 2023, but there are still community servers out there.

By modern standards, neither of these games look particularly good. The textures are blurry, objects are simple shapes, and the lighting is murky. However, you won't encounter any microtransactions, ads, or forced online features and the action is frantic. These are classic first-person shooters, the truest expression of a genre that led to some of the biggest games in the world today.

The game ISOs live on archive.org, which has thankfully come through the recent attacks unscathed. You can download the disk images directly (Unreal, Unreal Tournament) if you want to go that route, but the installers from Old Unreal can do the heavy lifting for you. They run on Windows 7 or later.

It's rare for publishers to open up games, even those that were released decades ago. Look no further than Nintendo and its litigious attitude toward emulation for evidence of that. Epic doesn't exactly have a reputation for being a warm and cuddly company, but this was the right call. These games are a key piece of gaming history, and letting people enjoy them isn't hurting Epic's bottom line in the least. Nintendo could take a lesson.