| Jointly
developed by Epic Megagames (now Epic Games) and Digital Extremes, the original
Unreal was first introduced to the world as a "Doom killer." But
after countless delays and the release of Quake, it was briefly written off
as vapourware. Some doubted it would ever see the light of day. Fortunately,
Unreal was finally released on April 30, 1998 after a then unheard of four to
five years of development (the exact figure varies, depending on who you
ask).
Unreal's
original release was marred by a variety of technical problems. Poor network
code made the online component barely functional and 3D support for certain
video cards was quite shoddy. On the single-player side, some complained that
the quality of levels suffered as the game progressed, possibly due to the
game's long development cycle.
Later patches fixed many of the original game's
flaws and a thriving mod community did the rest. Unreal’s unique editor and
powerful UnrealScript language spawned a vibrant, creative amateur game
development community that is still active and growing today.
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