FPS classics Unreal and Unreal Tournament are now free to play

Epic Games, creators of Unreal, have given the fan site OldUnreal permission to host and distribute free versions of 1998's Unreal and 1999's Unreal Tournament via The Internet Archive. 

Unreal, released in 1998, was the debut of the company's Unreal engine and proved to be a ground-breaking game that paved the way for shaping the Unreal engine into the industry behemoth it would become. For its time, it boasted impressive visuals, immersive gameplay, and fantastic enemy AI that puts up a heck of a challenge on higher difficulties. The game, alongside Half-Life, released in the same year, shaped the template for First Person Shooters (FPS) for years ahead.  

Epic followed that up with Unreal Tournament in 1999, another landmark multiplayer arena shooter that saw a memorable rivalry with iD software's Quake 3 Arena, eventually beating it for Game of the Year. Epic Games has since delisted both games from digital stores. 

The story was first reported by ResetEra forums, who posted a message from OldUnreal's discord server. The fan site has created easy-to-use installers that automatically download the files required and apply the fan patches to make the game playable on modern systems. You can grab installers for Unreal Gold Edition and Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition from OldUnreal.