What is Unreal Tournament?

Unreal Tournament is a tournament first person shooter with many different maps and modes. There are some arenas that take place in the zero gravity of space and most of them which take place on the ground The game also has online servers which are pretty inactive, but it also supports the usage of LAN games, perfect for local deathmatches. The game also has 2 modes you can select to play. Tournament Mode or Practice Mode. It's very fun, but when you start the game for the first time, Do yourself a BIG favor and go under the Options tab, Prefrences, and controls and remap the controls to WASD. For some reason, the game controls with the arrow keys by default and you have to reach over with your pinky to hit the spacebar, which makes no sense and it is a massive hand cramp waiting to happen.

See also: Unreal, Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Tournament 2004

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It’s been a long time since a game has attracted this much attention in the MacAddict editorial corral. Not only did Unreal Tournament tear us away from Quake in Arena and Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, but it kept us from spending the afternoon discussing Bill Gates’s stepping down as CEO of Microsoft. Now that's a sticky game (in a good way, you creep).

The premise for Unreal Tournament is a futuristic battleground where warriors duke it out with a fiery set of weapons. While strategy does enter into the game, at its heart Unreal Tournament is about fragging more than you get fragged. The game builds on the awe-inspiring Unreal engine to provide breathtaking beautiful graphics, complete with lighting effects and outdoor worlds.

Unreal Tournament provides four types of games: Deathmatch, Domination, Capture the Hag, and Assault... Each game type is well thought out, and for once, the other types are as good as (or even better than) Deathmatch. But it’s the level design that sets Unreal Tournament apart. Although levels can be small and straightforward, many are deep and complicated. Some maps feature areas where several levels converge into a vertical area, requiring players to look up and dovra while keeping an eye forward — a tough bill to fill.

Tactics for Unreal Tournament range from the standard kill-anything-that-moves strategy to a more sneaky hide-in-the-shadows-and-snipe. Sniping — or camping — is a legitimate and fun strategy. Players of the original Unreal will recognize some of Unreal Tournament’s weapons, but a few weapons (such as the Redeemer) are new to the game. Most of the power-ups (such as invisibility and health) remain the same as well. One new, tactically useful item is the Translocator, a personal teleportation device. Just drop the homing beacon where you want and you can teleport to it at the push of a button. Don’t rely on it foo much, though — the enemy can move your beacon into a hostile environment (such as a pool of lava).

The system requirements for this graphics engine are unreal, too. The minimum requirements are optimistic. To play the game at a reasonable level, MacSoft recommends a G3 processor, 96 MB of RAM, Mac OS 8 or later, and Rage Pro graphics. Still, this just gets you in the ballpark. To get the most out of Unreal Tournament, you should have a G3 with 120MB or so of free RAM (because the application will take up 105MB of that), and an ATI Rage 128, Formac ProFormance 3, or 3dfx 3D card. We tried playing on a Rev A iMac (with 64MB of RAM and Rage IIc graphics) and had difficulty killing one bot on the lowest graphics settings. Frame rates were abysmally low. However, an iMac works just fine as a dedicated server to drive a LAN game.

The single most important thing you need to boost frame rates in Unreal Tournament is a good graphics card. In a 9600 with a 300MHz G3 upgrade, Unreal Tournament played very well (20 to 30's) via a ProFormance 3 graphics card. The card comes with one other bonus — ProCyber3D glasses, which make everything come alive in three dimensions with only one small crosshair glitch. Check them out if you want truly stomach-churning play.

We had two major complaints with the game: the clunky user interface and the pathetic taunts from all players. Upon launching the game, you’re faced with a custom menu/window system reminiscent of a Windows and Motif (an antique Unix windowing system) hybrid — and it’s ugly. Fortunately, you won’t spend much time there once you’ve customized your controls — saving graces include a solid server finder and adjustable window frames for extra customization. Worse than the interface, though, is the series of auto-taunts the game spews out when someone makes a kill. Some taunts, such as “You suck,” don’t add anything, and a few are downright offensive (even to us). Fortunately, you can turn off auto-taunting.

Unreal Tournament is a killer addition to the first-person shooter genre, and it far out-shines the demo version. Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament’s closest competitor, isn’t nearly as addictive, and the levels and game variations don’t seem as well thought out. For our money, Unreal Tournament is the shooter of the hour. — David Reynolds

Reynolds, David. (April 2000). Unreal Tournament. MacAddict. (pgs. 52-53).

Download Unreal Tournament for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.6 up to Mac OS 10.5

Compatibility notes

• PowerPC 200mhz or faster
• At least 64MB of RAM
• Mac OS 7.6 - Mac OS 9.2.2 - Mac OS X

This game can be run on OS X PPC with UT436 patch - See Download #9

Tactical Ops 2.2.0 can run on this version

 

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver