New Players

Welcome to Populous

Populous: The Beginning is the third game of the Populous series by Bullfrog. The game (and mission pack) are both out of print, but Populous: The Beginning can still be purchased with other games on Amazon, or various other suppliers. The Mission Pack Populous: Undiscovered Worlds is not availible as a whole anywhere. If you can't find it, just skip ahead and download the matchmaker, there should be people there that will be able to direct you to a location to get the game.

Even though Populous was released a few years ago, the only patch (which was released the same year) was not included in many versions of the game. Regardless, we've created our own patch that not only does what the original official Bullfrog patch does, but it also brings your game up to date with several other patches. It will:

  • Fix the bugs that the official Bullfrog patch fixes
  • Update the version number to 1.03
  • Fix the network hosting bug
  • Make the game run without the CD
  • Make the game the US version
  • Install the resolution changer
  • Install Populous Restore
  • Install Pop check

You can get the Collective Patch (1.03) Here. Download and run the patch then continue on.

The network hosting fix in the patch is only relevant to people on home networks. If you have a router you must forward port 7575 UDP to the machine you want to host with.

The next thing you'll want is the Populous Reincarnated Matchmaker so you can play online. That can be downloaded directly from the link provided. Once the matchmaker has been downloaded and installed, you need to register a name so you can login and play other people for points. Registration is just a simple form to fill out in our forum. For more information on the matchmaker, read our in-depth matchmaker tutorial page.

Before you jump into online play, you should get to know the Populous Online Code Of Conduct. This document will go over the do's and don't's of playing Populous online with other people.

After you've made it to the lobby, you might want to play some new maps and mods that other people are playing. Those can be downloaded in the matchmaker on the mods page, or manually from the Map Packs Page.

That should be all you need to get started, if you have any questions you should visit the frequently asked questions page or just stop by the Forums.