The Rise and Fall of Unreal Tournament
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ก.ย. 2024
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Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake. These seminal games rest at the forefront of the first-person shooter genre. All were instrumental to the genre’s birth and subsequent growth in one way or another. Although, there does exist one title of consequence that too often goes without mention-Epic’s Unreal.
In recent years, Unreal has exclusively been associated with the game engine of the same name. As such, its roots are either forgotten or wholly unknown to younger generations of gamers. But long before Epic began showcasing demos of its graphics engines on console hardware, the studio’s original group of staffers dreamt of creating the premier PC gaming engine and FPS experience. The crew achieved this and more upon unleashing Unreal and the Unreal Engine in 1998.
Unreal began as a serviceable shooter powered by inventive technology, but held back by lackluster network offerings. A spinoff in the form of Unreal Tournament saw the series blossom into a tour de force competitive shooter, whose DNA remains scattered across modernity’s popular multiplayer adventures. And yet there were instances where it appeared Epic had lost track of Unreal’s roots, as the series lapsed into a ghost of its former self that followed the herd instead of leading as destined.
This is the rise and fall of Unreal.
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UT99 is one of the best games ever made. I still boot it up once a year around the holidays and do a full single-player Tournament run. Incredible vibes.
Best soundtrack of all time
I only got to play UT2004 and still had a blast!
During the summer I would stay up all night long, playing TDM on Facing Worlds. I learned how to lead shots with the sniper rifle with a 999ms dialup ping from the top of the towers :)
I am seriously hoping that RTX remix brings this game back to life.
UT99 is one of the best games ever made. I've got countless hours played in that game!
All my 16+ bots were customized with custom skins and voices. Some had absolute sniper aim when they got their preferred weapons but sucked when they had anything else. And let's not forget, the amazingly beautiful and intelligent adult star Asia Careera was an UT 99 player as well, even making her own custom skin.
Still a great game to load up and play.
BUT I WISH, I could play as the robots in Single Player 'Campaign' style :/ I love them.
When those games were deleted of the platform, I lost the faith in the industry :(. Those games are as important as Doom, Starcraft or Call of duty. Thanks for the video
@1chriscwf Did you even watch the first minute of the video? It's not about the game (I can just pirate it), it's about the message it sends: that people shouldn't care about history. This channel alone is proof that this just isn't correct
Unreal is not on Doom level.
Yeah that day Epic died for me.
I was already never gonna use their store but now I'll never buy a single Epic game. Glad I got the UT collection before the shutdown. Too bad UT4 will never happen. Fortnite is 🏳️🌈
You can run ut99 on windows 11
Such great memories of Unreal Tournament GOTY Edition. Back in Secondary School, loads of us would play LAN in the "Tech" room after school hours.
CTF while Sniping on Facing Worlds was my jam!
Cannot capture that same experience playing online, with a headset. I miss UT!
Thats awesome, someone had put one of the UTs on all the computers in the lab at our high school and we'd be playing there too lol
Facing Worlds is a legendary map in any FPS
Always a pleasure to see a new GVMERS retrospective
This guy's voice is MADE for this kind of work, lol. I wouldn't be surprised if he ever got a radio or documentary narration job
UT2004 is still my favorite multiplayer arena shooter ever. So many good memories with it. Such a shame how hard Epic dropped the ball with UT4 and then delisting the *entire* series afterwards.
UT & ET (enemy territory)
I was just playing it the other day, it absolutely still holds up as a high-adrenaline arena shooter. Now its all about hero shooters which just doesn't have the same vibe, I guess we have Halo infinite for our arena shooter needs but even that isn't the same
I still play it almost daily and I never get tired of a quick botmatch.
Instagib ctf, most intense mode.
Small simple maps, it was beautiful.
One of the biggest crimes in gaming is what Epic has done to try to erase Unreal.
It's clear it stopped being about the love of the game and became about money. Once they "adopted" the gamemode in fortnite, they shitcanned unreal tournament SO FAST.
@HXRDWIREDGaming it's not just about canning the new one, it's them removing the old games from every storefront that I don't understand.
@@JustAFan444 This part's the most infuriating. I'd happily play the 1999 Unreal Tournament with all my friends indefinitely but they just refuse to make it accessible
@PineappleStickers still ways to do that. Unfortunately you're stuck buying old physical copies, pirating, or buying keys from grey market sellers (if any grey market keys even exist) if you don't already own them.
@@JustAFan444 If they were transparent or upfront towards fans on why they had to delist them (some speculate it has something to do with a contractual conflict with Digital Extremes or some stupid lawsuit over parental controls in Fortnite) it'd be one thing but the fact they refuse to elaborate why is a fucking slap in the face. I will never play Fortnite again because of that.
Unreal Tournament 99 my favorite shooter of all time
I used tp play Unreal Tournament while listening Fear Factory and NIN... Good Times
Everything else aside, the announcer from Unreal Tournament remains my absolute favourite.
UUUULLLTRRAAA KILLLL!!!!!
I love that in UT 2003, when you bump up all the graphics settings to their highest, the announcer yells "Holy Shit!"
I want a new Unreal Tournament game pretty much more than ANY OTHER GAME. I can't even fully fathom how ambitious a fully fledged Unreal Tournament game would be in 2024. Half-Life 3 is seriously the only other game I want more. PLEASE MAKE IT!
At this point we have a higher chance of hl3 than unreal. Really sad state of affairs how epic forgotten who made them what they are today
I was JUST on a Unreal Tournament binge watching sesh. And this showed up just in time. 👍
Literally same. I'm playing with some guys 'the finals' and when i mentioned my arena roots they said they don't even know what's quake and unreal, i couldn't believe it. It's so sad that these have been dormant for so long people don't even know what they're missing anymore
This one hurts 😢 unreal was so cool as a 90s kid, never played online since internet was so slow in my hometown, but i had lots of fun against the bots
To this day i can still install my copy of ut2k4 on any machine i want, mod it, play with bots, play in lan, host custom private servers. Modern multiplayer shooters have none of it and i refuse to touch them because of that.
UT was many people's childhood. The soundtrack slaps just as hard today.
UT was one of those games that introduced me to the novelty of adding bots to a multiplayer custom game in case you didn't have anyone to play with or just didn't have intenet. It was a great way to simulate multiplayer gaming
The original Unreal Tournament is one of my all-time favorite games with one of my favorite soundtracks, and I hold it right up there with Doom as one of the best in the genre. More than anything else in the game industry, I wish we could get both a remaster for the GotY edition on modern systems (preferably from LRG), and a sequel at long last. I hate that Epic Games has essentially swept it under rug when it and the original Unreal are what made the company big in the first place. This series deserved so much better than that.
The irony, epic is now known for Unreal, the engine, but the engine was known for Unreal, the game..
UT was such a GOAT series, it's a crime it is no longer available.
Unreal Tournament... the game that is forever in my heart. Face.... the music.... the redeemer
This is the one I've been waiting for you to cover...this one hits harder than all the other downfalls for me cause I was there since Quake and UT was where the real memories were made. 04 is legendary, we got killing floor and red orchestra. What an era.
Unreal Tournament 99 is still the greatest arena FPS of all time. The spectacular music, iconic maps and amazing AI provides such a unique experience. It's a shame that Epic delisted the game everywhere. I can only hope for a proper remaster made by Nightdive but I doubt the game will ever be forgotten. Great video.
*Congratulations, you're the winner.*
This episode is gonna make me cry 😢 UT3 and Timesplitters 2/3 are my favourite game of all time
In the early 2000's there was this guy going around software companies making them put the year in the title and ensuring the product would feel dated past July of the same year.
I'd be very interested to know which publisher eventually hunted him down and had his head mounted to the wall of their marketing team.
Lol, to be fair it was a holdover from the 90s. Putting the year in the title of software was an easy way to keep buyers up to date on what was the latest... the we had the new milenium!
@@blunderingfool That should have a major red flag. Many decisions were made in the 90's, barely any had logic behind them that survived the first tentative rays of the next sunrise.
@@exharkhun5605 True, but at least people were generally less mental. :P
I'll say it over and over again..
Unreal Tournament 2004 offline with bots in 2024 is more fun than 99% of modern FPS games
I played UT2k4 for years, in competitions and for fun. Absolutely fantastic community. Jolt competitions and such was fantastic. Long gone now.
Finally some one made a video about unreal tournament
The best multiplayer series of all time. The original Unreal is also very underrated. I still remember the first time you step out of the ship to see the alien planet of Na Pali.
RIP
Thhank you for this
Unreal Tournament was one of the first games I constantly played on my first computer. It was one of the few that would even run on 32MB VRAM of the Riva TNT2 and it ran pretty fast too. Since then always thought of Unreal Engine as being an efficient engine, funny now it is known as one of the heaviest.
I would play with the Red Space Marine, Bullet Time and 3rd person camera mods on Facing Worlds. Getting nostalgia overload with this documentary and Space Marines II out now!
I only got my first PC in 1999, and Unreal was the first game I bought for it. I don't think I've replayed any game more than Unreal, last time in 2018. And I still think it holds up extremely well. The atmosphere and environmental storytelling of this game is unmatched IMO.
To those old enough and to clarify younger audiences, Unreal Tournament never died off on its own. It was killed off effective immediately the moment Fortnite and the battle royale game genre kicked off and started raking in massive profits. In that regard Unreal Tournament was seen as an antiquated relic from a time long passed that did not look anywhere near as profitable as Fortnite unfortunately...
+1 - Sad but 💯 true ⚡
My friend first let me play this on his Dreamcast. He’s in prison now for murder
#FreeTheGuy
That turn a hard turn
the footage really helps to convey how big the visual and tactile upgrade it was getting into UT2003 and 2004 as a shooter lover. The explosion of gibs with trailing blood, high quality bulky sweet ass guns, responsiveness in the controls, and an AI that could kick your ass back to spawn on the harder difficulties, made the game truly feel alive and immersive like the blockier older generations didn't
Unreal Tournament still remains of of the best FPS games of all time - excellent gameplay, excellent level designs, excellent AI, excellent graphics. Its a shame it was pulled out of storefronts...
GVMERS casually breaking my heart with that title
Don't think I'll ever forget my teenage gaming years spent playing UT99.
I slept on the original UT but lost track of the amount of hours sunk into UT2004. CTF, Deathmatch, the Scenarios and Control node game modes were god tier.
And who could forget invading Australia to restart a distillery. S-Tier gameplay
It's .... actually painful to see that episode. I had so much faith in Unreal Tournament 4, it could have been so much greater, it didn't even need that much investment. They had to get this team to develop Fortnite's Battle Royale and never come back ...
Even worse that they went out of their way to remove the game from all the stores. Crazy to see that Epic seem to actually hate their legacy for some reason
Forgone destruction off facing worlds is such a cool song. I love how the hi-hats circle from left to right in the mix
I remember trying those "videogames" in the 1995-2001 before UT1 sold me with the sound design. That music...
I remember UT3 release around the time CoD 4 MW1 was going to happen - who knew that jump from WW2 to modern times was such great idea.
Someone tried to copy Counter Strike with Tactical Ops - there was retail version and mod. One of them worked with UT1 so you could play UT1 maps with TO weapons.
I really miss Unreal Tournament.
unreal was what got me inspired to learn how to make art for games. I hope one day arena shooters come back; they were peak gaming for me.
as one of the rare ppl who have been playing ut for 20 years its really nice to see a larger channel finally put more eyes on ut really nice video
A new GVMERS video today is a good day.
Playing Unreal Tournament back in the day on dial-up and evenually cable modem was SO. MUCH. FUN. I miss those days.
Thanks a lot for this video!
Unreal Tournament 99 is by far the best game ever made! A game in perfection. I loved it so hard rocking with my german clans leagues like gsl, esl and so on in ctf. I loved my childhood.
I wish everyone best
UT2004, overall and taken as a whole, is the best FPS I've ever played.
Play Unreal tournament in that giant tower stage while listening to Janet Jackson in the background on media player is a core memory for me
I'm going to have to prepare myself for this one as the Unreal / Unreal Tournament / Unreal Championship games are some of my all-time favorites. I still listen to the soundtracks to this day.
I remember being there in the late 1990's near the release of the first Unreal. Read an article about Unreal and the Unreal Engine in a game magazine but didn't have a PC that could handle that kind of thing at the time. I remember downloading the demo for UT99 and playing it online. There was even a screen saver. Was active within the community for many years, both on the official forums and places like Beyond Unreal., I made a few mods for the game and was involved in some mod teams as well. I was active more or less throughout the 2000's and even tried out the 2014 release of the game, which I'd call UT4. It's too bad Epic has stopped support for this franchise. I'm glad that I could purchase the physical copies of the games, and might play them again some day.
What's insane to me is that Carmack spent ages figuring out how to use BSP in Quake and it was super fast. Then Sweeney looked at the result, figured out a completely alternative approach and made a fully real-time system that didn't need to be compiled and could be previewed live in the editor. Just crazy what what happening in gaming technology in the late 90s.
Thank you for telling me what happened to this series. One of my most played in the early 2ks.
FINALLY. So pumped for this one. TY for everything team!
To this day I say that Unreal Championship 2 was one of the most underrated games of all time. It was completely done from the ground up for consoles, and thus was completely different from Unreal Championship 1. Because of this, many people skipped over it thinking it was just more of Unreal Championship 1, when it was completely different. They should have kept the Unreal name, but named it something other that Championship as it was nothing like the original. It also didn't help that it was released around the same time as Halo 2 and practically EVERY shooter fan on the Xbox was obsessed with playing Halo 2 online, causing it to get overshadowed. What I wouldn't give for an Unreal Championship 3 in Unreal Engine 5, or even just a ReMake of UC2 in Unreal Engine 5.
UT99 was my first PC game when I was 10, and I still haven’t gotten tired of it.
I can never forget Unreal Tournament thanks to the Angry German Kid back in the mid-2000s. Good times
the OG UT has an AMAZING OST!
Holy FUCK. One of them I have to watch. But after work. LOVE YOU GUYS
playing UT on the DC online was amazing back in Y2K 🥰
I remember spending 8 hours downloading a 400 some odd MB demo of UT over a dial up modem. We had an Unreal Tournament club a school where we would LAN in the computer lab. It was fun for a few weeks and the vice principal even came in and thought it was interesting. Then Alex Griebel had to tell his mom and she complained and got it shut down.
UT2003 is, ironically, what introduced me to tactical FPS games via the Red Orchestra mod.
Nooo, my childhood cannot die.
I cannot tell ya how much I love this channel y’all are kicking ass keep it up my friends and take care :)
I’m just happy Unreal Tournament is getting its own episode in the new “secret level” series coming out.
The whole video game industry is cooked in my opinion. We need a 1983-esque reset. Nintendo just sues everyone, Microsoft has completely lost its customer base, and Sony just blew 400+ million on a horrible overwatch clone. We’re lost right now.
Unreal Tournament is/was so good, dawg. I miss that shit, they were absolutely a great set of games.
Unreal seems to be always drifting away from their former glory.
Great Vid !! Brought back a few memories of my early years getting into UT99 and the later PC titles to UT3 and 'UT4'. Went by the handle, TiryaZae. No clan affiliation. Still load up UT99 every now and then. Very few active servers though.
It's unreal how UT99 still holds up today in terms of music, gameplay and map design
Just apply HD textures and other graphical tweaks and boom, you got a game that will blow out most modern games out of the park.
UT99 is still going strong. I am playing daily with online buddies on servers. The community is great too, and you can have your own servers and there are community master servers. UT99 lives on.
I can't wait for GVMERS to do videos on The Rise and Fall of Assassins Creed and Dragon Age!
Please do Timesplitters if you haven’t already. I’ve been playing them on ps5 and the nostalgia for it hits deep. It is a franchise that means a lot to me.
UT GOTY/99 with the Chaos mutator mini-mod was so much fun. The massive CTF maps continually pumped out by the community were such a good thing.
UT2004 with its variety of mods - same! I remember when Ballistic Weapons came out for UT2004 - it changed the game and made it hilariously insane fun.
I wish they could revive this series and do it proper!
i wished for this unreal tournament documentary under another video of yours... thank you for fullfilling this wish :D i loved UT04.... onslaught mode... so much fun :O cheers and thanks!
I played UT3 so much online and loved it and its maps making community, especially those that baked their maps for PS3. Great times
big hit of nostalgia with this one... was in this 4th best german clan back in late 90s early 2ks... there were still hundreds way better than me... competitive gaming was something else back then...
I love UT99, I still play online to this day using community patches.
I would have loved one of these on Unreal and UT99 alone. UT99 absolutely blew minds back in the day. And there were the mods, like Infiltration, Serpentine, and Tactical Ops.
Still amazed at how much b-roll you guys are able to uncover.
video idea, the rise and fall of Concord, but it's just a TH-cam short because that's also how long it lasted
Ah, UT2004, years of memories. :) I've been playing this game from 2008 to 2020, in best years i was like division 2 player - semi-pro. :)
This is so sad. Alexa, play Foregone Destruction.
I still play UT2004 to this day.
feels weird watching this video after i've just played UT4 with all my friends for 3 hours.. We are many and we're very much alve! We don't need Epic anymore, we have the game for ourselves.
I still play the UT1/2004/3 and my license plate says UT 2003 :D (I also have the classic UT "U" sticker next to it....
But so far no one has spoken to me about it.
while i've liked previous Unreal games.
Unreal Tournament 3 left a really unique taste in my mouth.
it's been one of my favorite shooters since it launched, and i still play bot matches to this day.
i just adore that game, the looks of it, the vibe, the music, and the classic gameplay mixed with a more modern approach.
it's sad that that was the last release of such a great franchise.
i still think there's room for Unreal games in today's market.
but i also understand, as a company, it's a scary endeavor to pursue, especially if they're not gonna let the devs go balls to the wall crazy with it.
I guess the next Gvmers video will be a Tragedy of Sony’s Concord. Considering it lost a whopping $400,000,000.
99 and 2004 are still my favorite games ever
UT2004 was the game I learned game development from. Sadly, I never got to start a career in game development, I still have the physical books on how to make content for that game.
I loved play the Dreamcast version, back in the day! xDDD
Should probably add - when the Unreal tech demo came out, featuring a lot of the art style that we'd see in the final game, it wasn't called a Quake killer... *because there was no Quake*. The two projects entered full production around the same time, so Unreal is one of the full-3D projects that pre-date Quake's release (Aliens vs Predator PC is another one).
But of course, Quake did come out first; Id had a major headstart on the tech and general FPS design after Wolfenstein and Doom. While it does get looked back on as a major technical milestone, in reality, full-3D was coming anyway; Quake isn't foundational to the entire post-1996 genre. Doom is, though.
UT2004 is the perfect formula. Just make a game like that with modern graphics and technology and they would print gold
Good job I still have the discs.. those timeless classics are lost to the ether now.
BRO been playing ut99 since I was like 4 or 5 and still play it occasionally to this day!! Did not expect to see a UT vid today!!!!!
Fun fact: The Redeemer from UT is named after a small church of the same name, near where the dev's had lunch.
R.i.p Flak Cannon
Solar Winds, Epic Pinball. Oh the memories.
Bring back Unreal Tournament. I think they would do well if they were to make a new UT with the level design and aesthetics of UT 99 and 2004.
Ohhh!!... These are my games!.. I miss them dearly.
UT 2003 and 2004 are one of the GOATs
Still remember playing unreal coop during the summer when I was like 6/7.