It's no secret that at NeoTeo we love demakes, and not only because of nostalgia. We love seeing how programmers use the power of their imagination rather than the finesse of their code to adapt games from more sophisticated platforms to far more limited systems. And that's certainly the case with UT2600! Because before us we have nothing less than the demake of Unreal Tournament for Atari 2600. The result? Judge for yourself!
For those who don't know it, Unreal Tournament was an FPS created by Epic Games and released in 1999 for PC, later ported to a variety of consoles. A first-person shooter that shone in its competitive mode and snatched a bit of the spotlight from the reign of Quake, which used to capture all our attention. And not without reason: Unreal Tournament featured absolutely stunning graphics for its time, which were just the beginning of an evolution that continues to this day. With that in mind, imagine that making a demake of such a beast for a console like the Atari 2600 represents, at the very least, a great challenge. But Megga Games took up the gauntlet and didn't shy away from the task. This is the result.
"UT2600 provides fast arcade action for a minimum of two players (with support for teams of up to six people)," they explain on the official website of the demake, where you can play it online with just a click of a button. You can also download it and play with an emulator. "You can use a free emulator like Stella, or you can play it directly from your browser. Of course, the game was made to run on a real Atari 2600, but since the cartridge release is on the horizon, the only way to run the ROM on your 2600/VCS is to use a utility like the Harmony cartridge." Yes, you read that right: this is not just an aesthetic demake, the game will also work on your real Atari 2600 if you have the tools to burn the ROM to a real cartridge.
The game supports up to six players, in a free-for-all or in teams of two or three, as well as two game modes: Capture the Flag or Death Match. UT2600 has eleven different weapon types, including a giant melee hammer, a rocket launcher, a sniper rifle, a bio-rifle, and a homing rocket you can control with the gamepad, among others. Also, at present, there are sixteen different maps, each with its own strategies and nooks. Crazy!
UT2600 is still in beta but, as we've said, you can play it right now, either by downloading the ROM or through the page's online emulator. You do need at least one friend because this is a competitive game. And yes... no matter how much imagination you have, the limitations of the Atari 2600 make it impossible to program advanced artificial intelligence for bots. Enjoy!
