Unreal 20 Years Later: An LGR Retrospective 

In 1998 I was 40 and enjoyed this as much as any 13 year old. Still play it sometimes even to this day! I still enjoy just watching the opening screen. Truly a classic!

I remember the first time 14 year old me walked out of that prison ship. I immediately paused the game and called my dad to look at this marvel of modern technology and he was as baffled as I was. Good times

In 98 I worked for FPGaming, we developed the Assassin3D and sold the tech to Madcatz for the Panther and PantherXL. When the Unreal demo disc showed up at the offices, we spent at least an hour just marveling at the screen. Walking out of the ship for the 1st time was awe inspiring. ps. we designed the Joystick commands for all the first person games prior to DirectX implementing the code into directx. Sure was a fun time, playing every first person game there was at the time. (I still have all the original boxes and discs)

Kids will never understand how big of a deal this was. Huge leap in graphics, seeing reflections, huge area, such "real" looking creatures. You have to understand just a few years earlier we were all playing Doom 2.

"At least you can use a weapon and a flashlight at the same time, so you're not _doomed_ to shuffle between the two." I see what you did there. Nice.

This was truly ground breaking in 98, the dynamic lighting, transparency, music and sound effects etc there was simply no comparison in the sea of FPS at the time. Certainly pushed my 3dfx voodoo 2 and pentium 2 to the limit and loved every minute of it.

*They don't make box covers like that anymore* ✅🙂

The music tho... I never get tired of listening it.

that reflection in the castle flyby still amazes me.

I always remember the Sunspire level, where you were walking up a massive ramp to an even more massive tower, and realised that the tiny dots you could see moving around were actually enemies so far away you could barely see them...

I have bit of development experience with UE 4 and was a bit surprised that the naming schemes in the crash message or in the editor are still the same! Even some of the classes mentioned in the error message (e.g. UViewport) still exist to this day! This software is older than me and still rocks the industry! My props to Epic Games!

I really appreciate these videos. I had this and a voodoo 3. I think this game came free with my graphics card - that's the only reason I had. It's probably the only game I had too. It takes me back to my childhood and forgotten memories. 🙏🏻

20 years ago this was magic, the castle flyby gave me the goosebumps after 20 years!

Me and a mate just looked at the water for ages when we first played it. lol

Great video! This took me down memory lane... I was 27 back then and remember grabbing this game because it looked sooo good. Us old gamers...had to go through hell to make games run on PCs back in the day. Half the time when you looked at the requirements on the boxes (even though your pc met all of those requirements) - you never knew for sure if it would "really" run - or- how much time it would take to figure it out to get it to run. If you wanted to play a multiplayer game (ex:Doom) getting the correct baud modem and having your land line phone connect to your friends phone was a battle in itself (of course though, once youd finally get everything running and you were finally connected with your friend - someone would pick up the phone to use it and disconnect everyone). Younger gamers don't have a clue as to what we went through back in those early days...now they just plug and play. We actually had to think and troubleshoot for our early pc enjoyment (or frustration). Ha :)

I can't help but to geek out here but younger people cannot possibly fathom what Unreal brought to the PC gamer back then. For my personal experience, Unreal was the reason why I bought my very first Graphics Card ever. It was Voodoo Banshee. First time seeing the castle fly by in the title screen, I literally were shocked. Up until then, most of the PC gamer never seen a reflective mapping along with amazing shading. Like Clint said, THIS WAS LIKE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. The game Unreal was the reason why I was cemented into PC gaming. There were nothing like it on the console and frankly, I forgotten about console gaming after that.

Unreal, how old we are.

Damn man, Unreal scared the shit out of me as a kid, certainly that first level

Dude, you just opened the expansion box for the sake of the show!? very appreciated

I Remember playing this together with my dad as a kid. This created some of my fondest childhood memories. This game is why why I became the passionate gamer that I am today and I don't regret a second of it! This video genuinely made me really happy! Thank you for the amazing content ಥ‿ಥ

My favourite moment playing Unreal will always be walking up to a group of enemies while invisible... just to find them rolling dice. What an amazing game. So much personality and attention to detail.

My dad is the classical accountant, with glasses, serious guy and so on...he only played two games in his life: Unreal Tournament and Age of Empires 2. I remember that he stole my CD many times and brought it to work :D thanks for the memories LGR!

4:50 on the card it states, "we intend to... give you a game for the millenium". That's what I call replay value!

Thank you for the excellent retrospective! I very well remember the first time me and my cousin started up Unreal. With awe, we watched the whole intro loop a couple of times and the started up the first level. There where something really eerie about the prison - he the broken lights, the rumbles and the sound of an alarm. Horrifying screams of someone being killed or tortured echoed through our Juster Active 85-speakers and sounds of broken flourenscent tubes and electrical malfunctions just amplified the atmosphere. When the green fog/steam and explosions hit us in the vents, we knew we would shit bricks sooner or later. The, almost dead, guy in the chair by the control panel got us real good and we called for a pause :P

*Errata:* The Amplifier ONLY works with energy weapons, i.e. the Dispersion Pistol and the ASMD. Using it with the sniper rifle did no more than tint the screen red.

AWESOME VIDEO! Sadly my 20 +yr old gaming buddy passed away @56 we gamed for hrs back in the 90's so video's like these bring back so many memories .. i feel lost when i watch these video's knowing he would have loved to see videos like these just to bring back memories. luckily i was able to record us playing Duke 3d and unreal. GREAT TIMES!

Just lovin' it! UNREAL was my first entry back into PC back in 1997 after being "offline" for years (we didn't have much money and couldn't afford having a both an expensive PC AND a professional synth/keyboard at the same time. Being a musician I of course chose the musically direction at the time). But at this point in time my mom's school had an offer of an Zenith Data Systems or Bull computing if you will (Clint, did you do a piece on this PC company already?) desktop PII 266 MHz for a super bargain of NOK 8000,- back then! :D I remember buying Unreal several months before getting the actual PC and drooling over the box and manual. Finally getting the machine and setting it up and running it in Software rendering mode - it still blew my mind with its awesome atmosphere... but I soon sprung for my first Righteous 3D VoodooII 12MB accelerator card and HOLY MOTHER my mind was blown at 800x600 in millions of colours!

Oh yeah. Leaving the wreckage of the Vortex Rikers, stepping out into the open and just looking around, marveling at everything around you. To this day, I always do that, no matter how many times I play that level. That, together with the amazing soundtrack, makes Unreal one of my favorite gaming memories. :)

"UNREAL HAT: The coolest hat on the planet..." Now that's advertising.

I always loved how these older games looked.

Wow. That desktop capture at 4:35 has me in shock. It's like I'm really there in 1999 again.

Never played Unreal but I spent a LOT of time playing Unreal Tournament.

the times before steam, when one would borrow those games from friends to play them...

It still looks good, 20 years later! I remember being blown away by the graphics and the speed in this game. Online multiple was intense - can't believe that was the late 90's!

The soundtrack is amazing, truly feels like an alien world. I wish you touched more on the lore though.

@9:33 THAT moment in 98, when I saw what an exterior can look like+the ambient sound and the music ... that memory still brings tears to my eyes :)

I remember when I first saw Unreal in person. It was almost a religious experience. It was hard to comprehend what you were seeing. It was so amazing. I'll never forget that experience. Thanks for revisiting it. This video brought back such good memories.

The first game OST I ever cared about. In 2001 a neighbor had a “CD Burner”. He had multiple shiny discs with sharpie on them. He let me have a few becaus “he could just make more”. One was Godsmack, another was thief, and lastly Unreal. The sound of flightcastle on load still makes me smile. I never beat the game but I have bought it multiple times to replay including anthology. I spent many hours playing with Unreal tournament but most of my unreal time since 2001 has been listening to the soundtrack. Amazing birth of the most impactful engine ever

That game’s intro still gives me goosebumps!

This was one of the most iconic games ever made in FPS genre. The soundtrack and the graphics together are both a masterpiece.

8:50 hell, even now if I were to play this game that would scare the crap out of me - I cant even think of how terrifying it would have been to witness this when it was new.

That was awesome, thank you! It really is a masterpiece. I still haven't beaten this game, started it many times, but never finished it :)

"R.I.P. Quake II" Nvidia: How about no

My entire family enjoyed this game back in the day, and that's saying something as my brother and my mom were never really interested in PC games. It saw so much use that the CD became too scratched to read anymore, and we had to buy another copy of the game to continue playing. The graphics and sound design were mind-blowing at the time, and honestly still hold up today, easily looking better than even modern mobile games.

Unreal was really the first time PC grabbed me, I was preoccupied with Amiga, C64 and NES up until that point. But a friend of mine had this, and wow, it was so impressive. I remember we found some cheat codes (because yeah, that's how it worked back then) that let you spawn creatures and enemies and stuff... And man, that was just the coolest thing. We would spawn ourselves into random single player maps, since many of them were truly huge and outdoors. Then we would spawn dozens of human Bot AI's as well as enemy creatures, and watch these massive cinematic (well, they looked cinematic to us at the time!) battles play out. Whoever decided that spawned entities like that would come bundled with a basic AI behavior was a genius! And the fact the AI was sophisticated enough to actually enter battle in an unpredictable state, on an unpredictable arena, just like that, and was smart enough to pick sides and do the intuitively "correct" thing was just so mindblowing. It even worked in the multiplayer levels - we would often spawn huge hordes of creatures in the arenas, and then enabled the bots and watch the gladiator-esque arena battle that ensued. The latter of course must have been quite a popular past-time, as Unreal Tournament would eventually add this "horde mode" game mode. I don't remember when it first appeared, but I do remember having a fantastic time playing this "horde survival" mode in Unreal Tournament 2k3/2k4, listening to the frankly excellent music in those games, on those beautiful maps, with modifiers (mutators) such as low-grav... All this, on summer weekend LAN parties with just 2-3 of my friends at our house.... Man that was a good time. Unreal! P.S. Oh and yeah the editor - I 100% blame the original Unreal shipping with the editor for getting me into game design. I didn't understand anything, and it's the least intuitive level editor ever created, but there was no alternative so of course you learned how to use it!

The first time I loaded the game I was STUNNED. I couldnt believe my eyes. It was the time I realized that the 400$+ for the Voodoo2 12MB (i think that was the top tier, its been 25 years!) was worth it.

I still wasn't a fan of FPS games in 1998, Doom and Quake were interesting but not my thing, but Unreal with its lush alien setting and moody atmosphere changed that. This was my 1st FPS game and it still holds a special place in my gaming memories.

i still listen to the sound track in my car to this day;-)

One of my favorite mods was the "Dr Strangelove" one, the alt fire for the nuke allowed you to ride it. Once you got to your destination you were killed as well, but oh so fun!

20 years later and I'm only now questioning why the flares blow up...

Unreal is one of my favourite games of all time. The story is more complex than people give it credit for. On the surface you're just some faceless schlub marooned on an alien world, but as you explore and read the logs you find out that the native Nali think you're some kind of chosen messiah, sent by their lightning goddess to drive out the sky demons. Then you have the side story of the ISV Kran and the crew's encounters with the Skaarj, which is worth paying attention to on its own. Return to Na Pali was a fantastic expansion. The new Spinner enemies made my skin crawl, and the pack hunting, hit-and-run Rippers were a pain in the backside to deal with (stop running away FFS!)

Ah yes, The original Unreal. So many amazing and beautiful memories both in singleplayer and in online coop with that game. And to think now we have Unreal Engine 5

I can't wait for you to do a video on the Unreal Tournament series...my all-time favorite deathmatch shooter

Cant believe its been 20 years

I was so impressed with the 3d graphics I went out and bought a second Voodoo2 to run in SLI mode to get that extra couple of fps

I still never played the original Unreal, though Unreal Tournament was my teenage years. I’ll have to fix this

Awesome review - want to replay it again now. Much appreciated and hey, thanks for opening the expansion & reviewing that too!

I remember the game being 380mb. Blew my mind in the 90’s. I had it running on a Pentium MMX 233MHz with 32mb ram and a voodoo2 8mb. The moment the splash screen went away and it starter loading all those components was so exciting! And then... seeing everything come together with the music on... sends shivers down my spine, still does! It’s still mind boggling what little “power” we had back in the day and what awesome stuff you could run. Truly remarkable. Ohyeah, i still get a hard on from those “old” setup screens. Something about those simple and logical installers that are a joy to look at. Nostalgia goggles FTW. I also installed Hexen II and I LOVE when installers use music during installing. The experience and immersion is just something that can’t be replicated these days. (Also: Fallen Haven 2 and Heavy Gear used music during install) (Random thought: Does anyone remember the bone cracking sound when starting hexen?Such little things makes me a happy man) As a kid starting with dos games, wolf3d, skunny kart, wacky wheels, duke, hexen, heretic. All the way up to unreal was quite a sight to behold. Every year the improvements in hardware and software were amazing... Truly gratefull of those times. Keep up the good work.

This is awesome, I'm glad I'm not the only one doing a 20 year anniversary video for my favorite game of all time! (mine comes out tomorrow =P) I love how you used the new 227 community patch but still ran the game in what looks like 640x480 and software rendering for that nostalgia factor haha, plus the oldweapons mutator for old effects and sounds, and I could tell is was 227 by a few things, the detail texture showing on the escape ship when coming out of the white fog/clouds of the planet during the end cutscene (detail textures on meshes never worked, and volumetric fog unfortunately makes it VERY visible by itself), the new font on the Return To Na Pali title from the intro cutscene that we changed, and the scout ship taking off at the beginning of RTNP having a crooked take off that wasn't in the original game and honestly I still don't know what causes this bug haha. (plus the hidden effects we enabled in 227 for the rocket launcher and grenade launcher, red grenade for the alt fire grenades that can be toggled, etc, all that wasn't in original release) oh and I'm sure there are some comments saying this already, but the Amplifier only actually worked on the Dispersion Pistol and ASMD xD. EDIT: The final boss battle for Return To Na Pali was a Warlord actually that burst up out of the floor in that one area of the map, but I remember this being bugged and can unfortunately be skipped entirely EDIT 2: WOO YOU CAN SEE MY RLCOOP SERVER IN THE BROWSER LIST!!! \o/

I thought Unreal Tournament was even better. 30 of us having a Lan night once a month in a companies board room. It went on till 8am from the evening before. Great memories.

And now you cannot buy the game anymore online on GOG or Steam, because the online services were shut down. Unreal is mostly a single player game. Epic sucks! I saw your video and were exited to play it again....

This game was one of my defining childhood games. Not only was it a masterpiece of technology at the time but the intricate console commands within gave me an introduction into how games worked internally. It's rare to find a game that lets you peak under the hood enough that you begin to learn without even knowing it, and I credit it for my interest in computer technology and programming to this day.

The razorgun alt-fire mode makes the launched razors follow your crosshair.

Great game. The alien world was so “unreal”! The soundscape was particularly good as was the haunting music.

I'm 63, but have been gaming since 1995, and I remember about the first third of Unreal vividly, but nothing after that. The Unreal Tournament series that followed was quite amazing to behold at the time. However, Half life changed all expectations, as did Half Life 2. In those early days, the game series that imprinted on me the most were Doom, Duke Nukem, Quack, Unreal, Half Life , Deux Ex, F.E.A.R., then Elder Scrolls Oblivion, which sort of turned me away from shooters (except Borderlands and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.!).

that intro music and castle still give me chills :D

Unreal = Crysis of the 90s

4:26 - Redguard!!!' After a few months of weekend gameplay I finished Unreal. Then I was ready for a change of scene. I picked up swashbuckling piratey looking Redguard for $10 in the bargain bin at the department store ... now I'm an Elder Scrolls addict, alongside casual Unreal Engine dabbler!

It's kinda sad that Epic has stopped giving updates to the new Unreal Tournament now that Fortnite is churning more money for them. But it's nice to look back at how it all began, paving the way for one of the most widely used game engines in the industry.

Got a subscriber here, you brought me back to my roots! I officially switched from SNES to PC gaming in 1996, and trust me I believe when you said.. 'My PC can do this!" Seeing that beige plastic box from showing American Online, CD ROM encyclopedias, etc, on a 15inch CRT monitor to actual Gaming, perhaps it's one of the best experiences in gaming I have ever had. Good memories... Btw I love your PC game collection. You should do on Deadly Tide and Titanic AOT.

Anyone else feel like this game is kind of like a darker, earlier, more primitive Halo: Combat Evolved?

I'd play bot matches for days as a kid. Wow, the memories.

>the skaarj introduction >the terraniux ending you nailed it, man, insta sub

Man, I had forgotten about this game. I just remembered the first time I stepped out of that spaceship. My jaw dropped cartoonishly, and I felt drool on my lap

This whole game wall you have is a huge nostalgia trip for me! I owned Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Unreal Tournament, Turok 1 & 2, and Rainbow Six Rogue Spear

Watching these videos in 144p resolution while downloading Blood makes this video even more nostalgic! Thanks for that video showing Blood off. It finally got ported on steam. So pumped to try it out!

Ahhh Unreal. This is back when we could actually call ourselves the PC master race.

The challenge of 1998 was whether your system could handle Unreal. In April of 1998 with a new Voodo 3dfx card ram and cpu ...I was ready

7:24 "I had never played an FPS with such a focus on environmental storytelling like this before. You're just thrust into this lonely but chaotic situation with no idea what went wrong and very little to go on but the written logs of crew members and level design to fill in the gaps." Uhhhh, that's literally System Shock.

'Exiting Vortex Rikers' is still the biggest single leap in graphics compared to what was before in history

I absolutely fell in love with this game, as a kid, when I got to first play it, and it is STILL a game I play, today.

I still remember when my pop gave me a copy to use on HIS machine (he would never let anyone touch it normally). It was an amazing experience, he even used to get ps1 cheats for me online when the internet was only dial up and print them out :)

Man the graphics are actually really impressive. Werid how I never played the original Unreal.

Damn i really want that guy's library

I almost can't believe its been 21 years. I still vividly remember how this blew me away the first time.

You're like that cool neighbor that had all the cool shit my parents couldn't afford to buy for me and you'd let me play with all of it whenever I'd come over but without all the other weird stuff happening. Your channel is special. Thank you.

Such a classic! And not to forget: Deus Ex that used the same engine.

Now Unreal is gone

Used to play this game with my dad when I was 5-6 years old with my dad sitting on his lap while he was controlling movement and I was pressing the enter button to shoot. Amazing memories. The OST, graphics and atmosphere are 10/10. The game falls of half way through tho being quite repetitive. This video is perfect in covering all that!

Y'know, I actually like how the protagonist sounds. He sounds.. Just so normal. I've always thought that no one talks like voice actors do. It's pretty refreshing.

unreal made me into the game addict i am today

Just played the first main section of Unreal for the first time last month, absolutely brilliant game and holds up very well today in my opinion. Looking forward to playing Return to No Pali sometime in the future.

Do you think today's Epic will even remember the 20th anniversary of the franchise that _made_ them? Probably too deep into Battle Royal to remember anything...

This game came with my new Diamond Monster Voodoo Banshee GPU and I played it with only the keyboard, since I wasn't used to a mouse back then. Great memories like the screams in the chambers underneath the arena.

I still can't believe how unreal this game looks to this day. 😉 It's definitely aged like fine wine.

Haha, _that_ was a nice one. Your Joke @9:15 about being able to use a Flashlight *and* being able to hold a Weapon ... indeed you are not _Doomed_ to shuffle between the two. ;p BTW the Sideway mode for the Ripper was meant to change the way the blades Riccrocet ... not just to look cool. Say, _how_ can you use stuff(also what stuff can be used)from Return to Na Pali in Unreal Tournament? I use the OldSkool Mod for Unreal Tournament which lets you play the whole Campaign of Unreal and Return to Na Pali in Unreal Tournament ... but i never knew what content you get in UT.

One of my all-time favorite games

Pentium III 1000Mz processor, 1,5 GB hard drive, 180 MB RAM, a massive Nokia monitor, an US Robotics modem, Windows 98 and of course Unreal...

Very nice touch using a song from Alexander Brandon's "Mod Collection" album, his music has been a MONUMENTAL inspiration to me, and he shaped my childhood. Such a genius musician.