I’ve been trying to find the first version of Unity ever released (for historical and preservation purposes)
Unless I have missed something obvious my searches have been unsuccessful and thats why I am asking for help.
If anyone has any leads on this illusive version people reply to this message.
Thanks
The oldest version you’ll reasonably find is 2.6.1 because that was the first version of the engine that actually had a free option.
Before unity 2, it was only available on mac until towards the end of unity 1
Wow! That is some history there.
I wonder if anyone has a old mac any version of Unity 1 still installed? I would pay to get that history in my hands.
check here
Thanks! Checking it out now.
While it seems that these links no longer work I think that the file names may be incredibly useful to tracking down the oldest version of unity
The file has been found!
This link
brought me to an old forum post with old download links.
These download links do not work anymore, but there is a great website known as the Internet Archive.
If you don’t know, one of the many features on this site is the Wayback Machine, which lets you save any site at the current moment in time and you can look back at past saves.
I hopefully put the download link of the first Unity version from the forum page mentioned above, and to my surprise there was one save. I was really hoping that it would work, and it did!
If you are interested here’s the direct download link from the wayback machine https://web.archive.org/web/20190408093803/http://download.unity3d.com/download_unity/unity_iphone-1.0.0.dmg
And here is all of the saves of this download link (only 1 at this moment) https://web.archive.org/web/20190601000000*/http://download.unity3d.com/download_unity/unity_iphone-1.0.0.dmg
I really hope that the rest is as easy as getting a mac (I use windows) or emulating, but I have a feeling there might be more hurdle(s) to jump though.
Nice find!
they do work, but it gives some warning about it (at least on Firefox), downloads normally on Edge and Chrome.
Or can edit the links change http into https
https://download.unity3d.com/download_unity/unity_iphone-1.0.0.dmg
That is so weird they didn’t work for me before
Does anyone here have a mac they can test this on? I can’t get this running since I’m on windows.
Even if I find a mac to test this on it will probably take at least a few days
Plot twist: This isn’t “the oldest version of Unity”.
This is an installer for “Unity iPhone”, which was originally a branch from a different Unity version before it became a plugin to a later version of Unity 2 or 3. So this is Unity iPhone v1.0, but from memory that was split off from Unity 1.6 or there abouts.
See, back then Unity was not the multi-platform beast it is today. It was an OS X app which allowed content packaging for pre-built OS X, Windows and Web Player front-ends. Their first mobile version was a completely separate, stand-alone app based on a then older version of the engine. And that’s what you’ve found here.
Sounds like there’s a lot of work to do!
So Unity iPhone is a version of Unity 1.6?
Do you know of any leads on how we can get to the true Unity 1.0 or is it truly lost to time?
If you trust my memory of a thing I used well over a decade ago, yeah.
I bet there’ll be copies hanging around somewhere. It may not have been a free public download / trial at that time, though.
On that note, even if you can get the installer, you might not be able to install it. I vaguely recall early versions of Unity needing an online serial number check.
That’s probably going to be a problem.
If we can get the installer even that would be a huge win!
My main goal is to have this saved off for everyone to see, maybe part of the internet archive’s collection of software history.
Hopefully if there is a serial number check required it can be skipped somehow.
Thanks!
I’m going to try to contact Unity’s support. Maybe they can help!
Heh, I remember opening Unity website every day and check the news and the live demos, I was so happy when they released the Windows version.
Btw, I tried to open the 1.0.0 on my mac but the OS won’t let me open because it can’t verify and it complains it is not from a known source. 
I would suggest that you upgrade this project instead of looking for a previous version of Unity. I doubt Version 1 would even install. What Mac are you using? Someone on your team will need a Mac. Can you share a screenshot of the file structure of this project, starting at the project root? That should give an indication of the successful odds of upgrading. If you don’t have a Mac, share the project with one of us to try. If you are concerned about privacy, send it to me in a private message and I’ll give it a go.
