Hey again,
I'm sorry to hear that some people are questioning the legitimacy of this disc. Here is the story of how I got this disc, as well as the other discs I got from the same source. Hopefully this will alleviate any concerns.
I'm a general prototype video- and computer game collector, so I regularly browse eBay for prototypes of all sorts of games, which is how I came across the seller with the Unreal Beta CD-R.
A couple years back (July 12th of 2022, to be exact; had to dig back through my ebay history), I found some ebay listings for PlayStation prototype discs as well as some PC prototype discs, sold by the Slovakia-based eBay seller "spottygreyhound" (
https://www.ebay.com/usr/spottygreyhound?_tab=feedback). I bought a few of the prototype discs; I was mostly interested in the black and gold PlayStation prototype CD-Rs (the seller had more but didn't seem to want to sell them), but I went ahead and grabbed a few other proto discs which caught my eye after scanning their listings, and figured that maybe they'd have more prototypes available outside of ebay. After my purchases, I asked if they had any others for sale.
Sure enough, they had more, but they weren't listed yet, so I was directed to a photo gallery where they were uploading a bunch of prototype disc photos. I picked a few which seemed potentially interesting enough for me to buy. I sent collages of the photos of the discs I wanted to the seller, and they made custom listings for me so I could purchase them along with my other eBay purchases from them (please see the screenshot of my eBay purchases from them in my forthcoming PM). Based on labels, a lot of their remaining discs appeared to be CD-Rs of art assets and/or advertising materials used during development, but because I don't really care too much about collecting press materials or advertising documents, I tried to go after discs which looked like they'd have prototype builds of playable games. Among the photos they were uploading, I saw two Unreal discs which looked like they could be more than just marketing materials: one was the ad disc (which I bought, thinking that it said Apr 2, possibly a build date of April 2nd, but instead the handwriting turned out to be ADS 2... oops), the other was an Unreal Tournament disc which had Jay Wilbur written on it. At the time, I searched and saw that he was involved in development of Unreal Tournament (unfortunately, it turned out just to be a video of an interview he did, and not a game build beta disc from him).
When I got the discs in the mail, one of them was incorrect, and was a partial disc of an apparent set: The "WarZone 2100 Beta 1" disc that I bought from their eBay listing was shown in the eBay photo as a single disc with no indication of other parts in the listing or written on the disc itself, but what I got was the first disc of an apparent 2 disc set (note Disk [sic] 1/2 was written on what I got), which didn't match the photographed disc in the listing. I emailed the seller to see if they still had the photographed disc for sale so I could purchase that one as well. Unfortunately they'd already sold that one to somebody else, and didn't have any part 2 disc (said missing disc appears to now be on redump.org, amusingly enough), so instead of a return, they directed me to what was now a formal spreadsheet listing of their available discs, with the option for them to mail me a disc to make up for the WarZone mixup. One of the entries on the spreadsheet was for a disc labelled as Unreal Beta. It might have been among their prior photo stash, but either I overlooked it, or figured it was less interesting sounding, or later than, the one which I thought was labelled as Apr 2 on the case (again, this is what turned out to be the ADS 2 disc).
Based on the disc name and chance it could be interesting, I figured I'd take it to make up for the WarZone, in case it wasn't just more art files. They didn't have a whole lot left on the spreadsheet that caught my eye... so it it was kind of a "whatever, worth a shot, maybe it will be better than more marketing assets" at that point.
When I got the Unreal Beta CD-R, I checked it in my PC. After browsing the files, it seemed like it could be a potential game build. Probably when I went to make a rough ISOBuster backup of the CD-R, I investigated and compared the file contents against files in the final game, and noticed that the filedates were indeed mostly different from, and earlier than, those in the final build. I double checked for other Unreal prototypes/betas on the internet, and found a number of them had been shared online previously, but none of the dates looked like they lined up with the dates on disc I recievd. I tried installing the build and playing it, but it was password protected so I couldn't get it to run beyond that point.
Eventually I did a bit of reading about Unreal's development history and saw that there was a "Kill the Cow" mode cut near the end of development. I wondered if maybe mine had this mode still in it, but since I couldn't boot the build, I did the next best thing and searched in a hex editor to see if I could find any reference to "Cow" which wasn't present in the final build, and noted what looked to be a textual mention of Kill the Cow, which didn't show up when I searched the same in the retail disc file.
I also found the thread here on Beta Archive about Unreal, and since it seemed to still be semi-active, I signed up to ask if the beta build I received were already online, or if it were something new and unique. From the reply I got, it sounded like it was something different from what was known. At that point I thought "cool, guess this is something new," and only really thought about it occasionally, since I couldn't actually play it. And while I liked Unreal, I haven't really played it since it was new and didn't keep up with the series.
Eventually I became aware of other prototype game and advertising CD-Rs which seemed to come from the same Slovakian source finding their way online; among those were some of their other Unreal asset/ad discs (
https://archive.org/details/redump-id-99014 and it looks like there's more on there in the same collection; I also see this images disc
https://archive.org/details/redump-id-99170). The advertising discs that I can find uploaded on there seemed to hold different contents from the one I dumped.
Also of note, is that the Unreal Ads CD-R and Unreal Beta CD-R I have both are on the same type of old CD-R as eachother, as is one of the Unreal advertising discs somebody else posted online (linked above), as is the Total Annihilation Core Contigency Gold Master prototype disc, as is the early build of Rogue Trip for the PlayStation (see photos), all of which I purchased from the same seller at around the same time. Just like Unreal, Rogue Trip and TA Core Contigency were published by GT Interactive over the course of 1998, with the apparent burn/build dates of each proto CD-R all from around the same timeframe (mid-ish 1998), so it stands to reason that they all originated from somebody linked with GT Interactive at the time.
In the postimg gallery you will find photos of other proto discs I got from the same seller, as well as some screenshots of the discs I purchased on ebay, as well as some of the eBay messages to arrange for the replacement disc due to the WarZone mishap. Note that the 4 GT Interactive published items from 1998 are all on the same type of CD-R. The two discs of GT Interactive published games from 1999 (Unreal Tournament and Rampage 2 were both published by GTInteractive in Europe) are on the same type of TDK CD-R, and seem to match with the CD-R type used for some of Unreal Tournament assets dumped on Web Archive.
The WarZone disc is the one I received that didn't match with the seller's listing photo. What sounds like it could very well be the other disc of the WarZone set was obtained by somebody else and is currently listed on redump: http://redump.org/disc/107993/
If you'd like me to send you dumps from any of these other discs, feel free to let me know, as I'm more than happy to dump them and send them your way, especially if they'd help ease any concerns regarding the legitimacy of the Unreal beta. Some of them might not be too interesting in terms of their content, outside of the Rogue Trip prototype, which is clearly earlier than the final version, predating the final build by about 2.5 months and not matching the other prototype of it that I can find online. Rampage 2 isn't final either, though it seems to be a later version than another prototype build which I found online.
Long story short, I got the Unreal Beta CD-R and other protos from a seller who sold me, and apparently other buyers, several other legitimate prototype discs. This seller had a number of other legitimate prototype discs, as well as several legitimate Unreal marketing/advertising asset material discs. The same type of vintage CD-R that the Unreal Beta is on was also used for other legitimate GT Interactive-published marketing materials and prototype games, including at least two other Unreal advertising asset discs. The later Rampage 2 and Unreal Tournament Jay Wilbur CD-R type match with other Unreal and GTI marketing/prototype discs from the same era, as found on Web Archive.
https://archive.org/details/@apple_maci ... redump_org
https://archive.org/details/redump-id-99014
Please see photos of the discs and screenshots of some of my communications with the seller in the postimg gallery:
https://postimg.cc/gallery/tVGvByf
