Unreal Tournament 2003

Unreal Tournament 2003, initially developed as Unreal Tournament 2, was unofficially announced on December 3, 2001. It was officially announced by Infogrames (now Atari) on January 4, 2002. UT2003 was released to stores on September 30, 2002.

History

Unreal Tournament 2003 began development as a PC port of the then existing Unreal Championship code for the original Xbox named Unreal Tournament 2. Initially, the game continued development alongside Unreal Championship and the two games were expected to be released around the same time in the summer of 2002. However, after E3 2002, it became clear to Epic and DE that they would be able to complete both UT2003 and Unreal Championship faster if each team was dedicated to one specific game, so Epic took over UT2003 allowing DE to focues on Unreal Championship.

Around this time in the summer of 2002, someone working for ATI, who had received a pre-release copy of UT2003 to demo their new hardware, leaked it onto many popular P2P programs.

Also around the time Epic took over the development of UT2003, Mark Rein began reporting that the demo would be out in "around two weeks". Every two weeks he would come back and say "it's going to be at least two more weeks". This led to a variety of jokes regarding Mark Rein and "two weeks". When the demo was actually nearing completion in mid-September, 2002, CliffyB set up a webcam that was pointed at a sign on the wall of Epic's office stating that the demo would be done in so much time, eventually coming down to hours.

Within a couple weeks of the demo being released, the game went gold to much displeasure from the fans who were expecting Epic to spend more time fixing bugs that were being reported before the game was released on September 30, 2002.

Demo

The demo for the game saw massive initial success. Most download records at the time were broken upon it's release.

The demo was released with two deathmatch maps Antalus and Asbestos, one CTF map Citadel, and a Bombing Run map Anubis.

There were many small changes made between the demo and the retail version of the game. One of the largest of these changes being modifications to the link gun.

Release Details

Unreal Tournament 2003 had only one release. It was published by Atari and released to stores on September 30, 2002.

Other Unreal Tournament games have been released in a variety of formats, however UT2003 was skipped over even for the Unreal Anthology since almost all of it's content was also included in UT2004.

Reception

While Unreal Tournament 2003 saw massive initial success, with the release of the demo actually slowing down the internet by up to 73%, it was not well received by fans of the series. The game did receive mostly high scores and positive reviews, however many fans of the series thought the new gameplay features detracted from the fun of the original game and stopped playing.

Critiques of the game mostly often included double jumping, dodge jumping, the inclusion of adrenaline and the overall reduction in damage and effectiveness of all of the weapons aside from hitscan. A few months after the release of the game, a fairly strong, small community rose up around the game and lasted until the release of Unreal Tournament 2004.

Game Content

Music

Starsky Partridge (Digital Extremes) and Kevin Riepl (Epic Games) are credited for the creating the music contained in Unreal Tournament 2003

Tracks

Weapons

• Translocator
• Shield Gun
• Assault Rifle
• Bio Rifle
• Shock Rifle
• Link Gun
• Minigun
• Flak Cannon
• Rocket Launcher
• Lightning Gun
• Ion Painter
• Redeemer

Characters

• Malcolm
• Gorge

Gametypes

• Deathmatch
• Team Deathmatch
• Capture The Flag
• Double Domination
• Bombing Run

Maps

Bonus Content

Epic Bonus Pack

Released on March 11, 2003 (?) by Epic Games.

Included:

• Three new gametypes, two new mutators, two additional features and ten new maps.

Gametypes

• Mutant
• Last Man Standing
• Invasion

Mutators

• Pint-sized Combo
• Camouflage Combo

Additional Features

• In-game OGG Player
• Custom Announcer Voices

DE Bonus Pack

Released February 1st, 2003 (?) by Digital Extremes.

Included:

• Six new maps

User Created Content

Additional Information

Trivia

• Unreal Tournament 2003 was originally named Unreal Tournament 2 but the name was changed by Digital Extremes to give the game more of a sports theme feel.

Previews and Reviews

References

• Unreal Tournament 2 Exists!
• Epic Takes Over UT2003 Development
• Demo downloaded by over 1.2 million people in just five days
• UT2003 Goes Gold!
• BU Running slow after UT2003 demo release
• Internet slows to a chug after UT2003 demo release
• UT2003 Demo Released

See Also

• Unreal Tournament
• Unreal Tournament 2004
• Unreal Tournament 3