But I remember Unreal being unreachable for me at that time because I couldn't even dream of getting a graphics accelerator and it won't even start with out a one, or was it the sound card requirement that was the blocker?

Everything up to (and including) Unreal Tournament had software rendering. It was one of the selling points when its competitor (Quake 3) was Hardware-accelerated-only.

Original Unreal had soft rendering just like Quake 1/2 and so on. Though at that point my brother and I had saved up enough beans to buy a Voodoo2.

I think it was the graphics card. I remember getting a paper route and waking up at 5am every morning to save up the money for my Voodoo card. Was absolutely mind blowing as a 13 year old.