Unreal (1998 video game)
Hacker ApprovedRanked 10 of 24 first-person shooters by recommenders
Praised for impressive graphics, a full-featured software renderer and responsive mouse. Critics say it ran choppily at 400x300 and performed poorly on some hardware.
Praised for impressive graphics, a full-featured software renderer and responsive mouse. Critics say it ran choppily at 400x300 and performed poorly on some hardware.
20 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 16
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 80%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 16 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Impressive, gorgeous visuals
“Unreal seems to be pretty frictionless for getting something working that looks impressive”
Comment from 29 Jul 2026 in “Shipping Godot VR and Porting to PSVR2: A Partial Post Mortem” “Oh yeah, Unreal was so nice looking.”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Max Payne – two decades later – Graphics Critique” “it was oh my god, this is beautiful”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Max Payne – two decades later – Graphics Critique” - Comment from 30 Jul 2026 in “Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9”
Full-featured software renderer with colored lighting
“Half-Life and Unreal do this better, they support colored lighting in their software mode.”
Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “I love software rendering” “Unreal did use MMX, which allowed it to work in 32-bit color mode with colored lighting”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “SIMD in the 90s: Programming Intel's Pentium MMX” “I was (and still am) amazed at how full-featured the software renderer was.”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project”
Other first-person shooters people recommend
The four most recommended other first-person shooters, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quake | 118 | 29 | 80% | 12 | 28 yrs8 owners | Approved |
| Doom by id Software | 102 | 24 | 81% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Unreal Tournament 2004 | 51 | 12 | 81% | 6 | — | Approved |
| Quake III Arena | 49 | 3 | 94% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Unreal (1998 video game)This page | 16 | 4 | 80% | 9 | — | Approved |
What people said
21 of the 23 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I love the instant mouse movements in unreal 1 games”
“Half-Life and Unreal do this better, they support colored lighting in their software mode.”
“frustrated with the big engines (Unity/Unreal/Godot etc)”
“Unreal was slightly choppy but acceptable at 400x300”
“Unreal did use MMX, which allowed it to work in 32-bit color mode with colored lighting”
“Unreal looker absolutely gorgeous”
“Unreal seems to be pretty frictionless for getting something working that looks impressive”
“not using Unity/Unreal brought back to me the joy of game development”
“it took Epic stepping in with Unreal that finally dethroned ID”
“Many professional software like Maya, Houdini, Unreal, etc. that used to run great on Linux/X11, now sucks on wayland”
“no visual editor where AI will struggle like with Unity/Unreal/Godot”
“Unreal stores its core assets in binary files”
“did not perform particularly well on that hardware compared to nvidia”
“It was the pinnacle of classic FPS IMO.”
“I was (and still am) amazed at how full-featured the software renderer was.”
“Ditto, I said the same about Unreal.”
“Unreal changed that a little”
“Oh yeah, Unreal was so nice looking.”
“it was oh my god, this is beautiful”
“maybe even up to Unreal (Glide) or Sonic Adventure on DC”
“even with a really modular system like Unreal it gets convoluted”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.