Unreal Tournament is a first-person shooter video game co-developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes.

It was published in 1999 by GT Interactive.

Retrospectively, the game has also been referred to as UT99 or UT Classic to differentiate it from its numbered sequels. The game is based on the same technology that powered Unreal, but the design of UT shifted the series' focus to competitive multiplayer action, a trend at the time: id Software's Quake III Arena was released only ten days later.

UT was designed as an arena FPS, with head-to-head multiplayer deathmatches being the primary focus of the game. The game's single-player campaign is essentially a series of arena matches played with bots. For team matches, bots are again used to fill the roles of the player's teammates. Even on dedicated multiplayer servers, bots are sometimes used to pad out teams that are short on players.

UT is known and widely praised for its bot AI, the product of programmer Steve Polge who had earlier risen to fame by designing the Reaper Bot for Quake, one of the earliest examples of an effective deathmatch bot. The player can choose a bot skill level (anywhere from "Novice" to "Godlike") or set it to automatically adjust to the player's performance. Bots can be further customized by changing names, appearance, accuracy, weapon preferences, awareness, and so forth.

Game types

• Deathmatch: A classic every-man-for-himself player vs. player combat. The objective is to out-frag all opposing players.
  
  


• Team Deathmatch: Teams compete together to out-frag the opponent team. Like Capture the Flag and Domination in this version—and unlike subsequent releases—four teams were allowed: Red, Blue, Green and Gold.
  
  


• Capture the Flag: Classic Capture the Flag. Players compete to capture the other team's flag and return it to their base. Competitive teams must use a great deal of teamplay. Both teams must defend the base from incoming attackers and get into the other team's base, take their flag and return to base. This requires that the team protect their flag carrier very well from enemies in order to complete their objective.
  
  


• Domination: Teams compete to control various control points to earn points and win the map. Standard maps contain three control points. Control of these points is initially accomplished through occupation (physically occupying the space), but control of a point continues until a player from another team occupies the space. The more control points one team controls, the faster it gains points.
  
  


• Last Man Standing: Similar to Deathmatch, the objective here is to remain alive longer than your opponents, putting an emphasis on number of deaths rather than kills. Players start with all weapons available, fully loaded, and have a set number of lives. Power-ups, including health and ammunition packs, are unavailable. Once a player runs out of lives they lose and have to wait as spectators until the match ends.
  
  


• Assault: This game type is played with two opposing teams, one assaulting a "base" and the other defending it. The map is set up with a number of objectives which the attacking team must complete (usually in sequence) such as destroying something, entering an area, triggering a button, et cetera. The team who first attacks then defends, and attempts to defend for the entire time they attacked. If they can accomplish this, they win the map. If the team defending first assaults the base faster than the other team, they win the map. If both teams defend for the maximum amount of time the map is a tie.

Modification

As Unreal Tournament is a popular game, many fans have taken advantage of the chance to create mods for the game. These range from slight changes on some aspects of gameplay (such as map voting) or to total conversions.

One modification ChaosUT became popular enough that it was included with the 'Game of the Year' edition of the game, while Tactical Ops was released as a stand alone retail product.

Another popular mod, released by co-creator Digital Extremes, is "Relics", which adds items to the game which have various effects on the player who obtains them.

Relics include:

- Vengeance (when the player holding it dies, a skull appears at the point of death and then explodes in a similar fashion to the Redeemer); Defense (which lessens the damage done by weapons);

- Speed (which gives the holding player a boost in speed);

- Redemption (which teleports the holding player to a different area when the player's health meter is at 0); Strength (which boosts the damage done by the player's weapons);

- Regeneration (which regularly increases the player's health by 10 points).

As with the original Unreal, the ease with which players can create and release mods to the core game is a key factor contributing to UT's longevity. UT improved upon the mod-friendly nature of its predecessor with support for mutators such as Sniper Arena, Instagib, JumpMatch, Low Gravity and more. Further, UT clans, or gaming teams, and a score of UT dedicated clan and fan community sites continue to sustain Unreal Tournament's popularity years after its initial release.