Unreal and Unreal Tournament are now legally available to download for free

If you’re one of the many people who, like me, felt deep dismay at seeing Epic Games give up on their Unreal Tournament revival to focus on Fortnite, then I have good news.

OldUnreal is the name of a fan-made project meant to revive Unreal and Unreal Tournament for modern machines. Both games work fantastically well on WinXP and above, are free, and, most importantly, the project won’t come to an abrupt end caused by the whim of a disgruntled IP owner. Yes, the good people at Epic Games were kind enough to allow fans to tinker with and make their abandonware available for free for anyone who wants to relive the classic.

This news couldn’t have better time, coming out right after Blizzard announced the release of remasters for many of its most popular games. I’m talking games which were either forgotten — by the company, not fans — or games the company messed-up with improper remasters or unnecessary sequels. Hell, even World of Warcraft classic is getting an even classic-er revival. Are we looking at the dawn of true preservation, or at least at a great chance of showing newer generations how good we had it back then?

You can get the OldUnreal version of Unreal Gold here and Unreal Tournament GOTY here. The person behind OldUnreal are working on the Mac OS and Linux installers. Both versions feature great compatibility with modern systems right off the gate, are incredibly easy to get up and running, and offer a wide array of customization options if your machine happens to not run it all that well for any reason.

I personally never cared much about Unreal, but Unreal Tournament was an entirely different ballgame. I’m certain many will know exactly what I’m talking about. If you were ever big into either title, do everyone a favor and pick it up. Try it, then perhaps consider filling the Internet with heartfelt messages that will get Tim Sweeney to consider reviving the revival of this hallmark of online gaming history.

And you can always help this massive effort in video game preservation by clicking to donate here.