Wasteland is a post-apocalyptic
computer role-playing gameA computer role-playing game is a broad video game genre originally developed for personal computers and other home computers. While technically not a separate genre, and sharing the same defining characteristics as console RPGs there are nonetheless general tendencies that make them distinct...
first released in 1988. The game was designed by Alan Pavlish,
Brian FargoBrian Fargo is a computer game developer and notable game industry figure.In 1984 Fargo founded Interplay Productions, where he worked on most of Interplay's early games...
,
Michael A. StackpoleMichael A. Stackpole is a science fiction and fantasy author best known for his Star Wars and Battletech books. He was born in Wausau, Wisconsin, but raised in Vermont...
and
Ken St. AndreKenneth Eugene St. Andre is a public librarian, fantasy author, and game designer, best known for his work with Tunnels & Trolls. He has been an active member of The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America since 1989....
, programmed by Pavlish, and produced by David Albert for Interplay Productions, and published by
Electronic ArtsElectronic Arts is an international developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers responsible...
.
The game is set in the middle of the 21st century, following a
nuclear warNuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weapons are used. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare is vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...
between the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
. Parts of
EarthEarth is the third planet from the Sun. It is the fifth largest of the eight planets in the solar system, and the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System in terms of diameter, mass and density...
have been turned into a "wasteland" where survival is the paramount objective.
Wasteland is a post-apocalyptic
computer role-playing gameA computer role-playing game is a broad video game genre originally developed for personal computers and other home computers. While technically not a separate genre, and sharing the same defining characteristics as console RPGs there are nonetheless general tendencies that make them distinct...
first released in 1988. The game was designed by Alan Pavlish,
Brian FargoBrian Fargo is a computer game developer and notable game industry figure.In 1984 Fargo founded Interplay Productions, where he worked on most of Interplay's early games...
,
Michael A. StackpoleMichael A. Stackpole is a science fiction and fantasy author best known for his Star Wars and Battletech books. He was born in Wausau, Wisconsin, but raised in Vermont...
and
Ken St. AndreKenneth Eugene St. Andre is a public librarian, fantasy author, and game designer, best known for his work with Tunnels & Trolls. He has been an active member of The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America since 1989....
, programmed by Pavlish, and produced by David Albert for Interplay Productions, and published by
Electronic ArtsElectronic Arts is an international developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers responsible...
.
Overview
The game is set in the middle of the 21st century, following a
nuclear warNuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weapons are used. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare is vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...
between the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
. Parts of
EarthEarth is the third planet from the Sun. It is the fifth largest of the eight planets in the solar system, and the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System in terms of diameter, mass and density...
have been turned into a "wasteland" where survival is the paramount objective. Players control a party of Desert Rangers, a remnant of the
United States ArmyThe United States Army is the branch of the United States Military responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military and is one of seven uniformed services...
based in the deserts of the Southwestern U.S. that survived the nuclear holocaust, and are assigned to investigate a series of disturbances in the
desertA desert is a landscape or region that receives almost no precipitation. Deserts are defined as areas with an average annual precipitation of less than per year, or as areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration than falls as precipitation. In the Köppen climate classification system,...
. The party begins with four characters, and through the course of the game can hold as many as seven characters by recruiting certain citizens and creatures of the wasteland to the player's cause. Throughout the game, the player explores the remaining enclaves of human civilization, including a post-apocalyptic
Las VegasLas Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada, the seat of Clark County, and an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, fine dining, and entertainment. Las Vegas, which bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, is famous for the number of...
.
Gameplay
The game mechanics were based directly on those used in the role-playing games
Tunnels and TrollsTunnels & Trolls is a 1975 fantasy role-playing game designed by Ken St. Andre and published by Flying Buffalo. The second modern role-playing game ever published, it was developed to be a simpler alternative to Dungeons and Dragons suitable for solitaire and play-by-mail gameplay.-Setting:The...
and
Mercenaries, Spies and Private EyesMercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes is a role-playing game designed and written by Michael A. Stackpole and first published in April 1983 by Blade, a division of Flying Buffalo, Inc. A second edition was later published by Sleuth Publications, but Flying Buffalo continues to distribute the game...
created by St. Andre and Stackpole. Characters in
Wasteland consequently have various
statisticsA statistic in role-playing games is a piece of data which represents a particular aspect of a fictional character. That piece of data is usually a integer or, in some cases, a set of dice....
(
strengthPhysical strength is the ability of a person to exert force on physical objects using muscles. Increasing physical strength is the goal of strength training.-Overview:...
,
intelligenceIntelligence is an umbrella term used to describe a property of the mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn. There are several ways to define intelligence...
and
luckLuck is a belief in good or bad fortune in life caused by accident or chancewhich happens beyond a person's control.Luck is significant in everyday life,as well as Morality, Epistemology, Business and other endeavors....
among others) that allow them to use different skills and
weaponA weapon is a tool used to apply force for the purpose of hunting, attack, self-defense, or defense in combat.Weapons can be as simple as a club, or as complex as an intercontinental ballistic missile, and include those that damage individual or group morale.-Prehistoric weapons:Very simple weapon...
s. Experience is gained through battle and through use of skills. The game would generally let players advance with a variety of tactics: to get through a locked gate, a player could use his Picklock skill, his Climb skill, or his Strength attribute; or he could force the gate with a crowbar - or a
LAW rocketThe M72 LAW is a portable one-shot 66 mm unguided anti-tank weapon, designed in the United States by Paul V. Choate, Charles B. Weeks, and Frank A. Spinale et al...
.
Wasteland was one of the first RPGs in which all the characters in the party were not mere puppets for the player to control. The initial band of Desert Rangers encountered a number of
NPCsA non-player character, often shortened to NPC, is a character that is controlled by the gamemaster in role-playing games. When this definition extends to video games, an NPC in a video game is usually part of the program, and not controlled by a human....
as the game progressed who could be recruited into the party. Unlike those of other computer RPGs of the time, these NPCs might temporarily refuse to give up an item or perform an action if ordered to do so.
The game was also one of the first games featuring a
persistent worldA persistent world is a virtual world that continues to exist even after a user exits the world and that user-made changes to its state are, to some extent, permanent...
. Changes to the game world were stored and kept. Returning to areas later in the game, one would find them in the state one left them in, instead of being reset to their original state, as was common for games of the time. Since harddrives were still rare in homecomputers in 1988, this meant the original game discs had to be copied first, as the manual instructed one to do.
One of the other features of this game was the inclusion of a printed collection of paragraphs which the game would instruct the player to read at the appropriate times. These paragraphs described encounters and conversations, contained clues, and added to the overall texture of the game. Such paragraph books were a common feature of computer role-playing games of the period. Because programming space was at a premium, it saved on resources to have most of the game's story printed out in a separate manual rather than store it within the game's code itself. The paragraph books also served as a rudimentary form of
copy protectionCopy protection, also known as content protection, copy obstruction, copy prevention and copy restriction, is a technology for preventing the reproduction of copyrighted software, movies, music, and other media.- Terminology :...
, as someone playing a copied version of the game would miss out on much of the story as well as clues necessary to progress. Additionally, the paragraphs included a dummy story line about a mission to
MarsMars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. It is also referred to as the "Red Planet" because of its reddish appearance, due to iron oxide prevalent on its surface....
intended to mislead those who read the paragraphs when not instructed to, and a bogus set of passwords that would trip up cheaters with results that ranged from character sex changes to detonating a bomb.
The game was also known for such combat prose as "Rabbit is reduced to a thin red paste" and "Thug explodes like a blood sausage", which prompted an unofficial
PG-13 sticker on the game packaging in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Platforms
Wasteland was first distributed for the Apple II and ported to the
Commodore 64The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January, 1982. Volume production started sometime in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$ 595...
and IBM platforms in 1988 - it is often (and erroneously) listed as being published in 1987, because that year appears on the title screen of the Apple version. Wasteland was rereleased as part of
Interplay's 10 Year Anthology: Classic Collection in 1995, and also included in the 1998
Ultimate RPG Archives through Interplay's DragonPlay label. These later bundled releases were missing the original setup program, which allowed the game's maps to be reset, while retaining your original team of rangers. Jeremy Reaban wrote an unofficial (and unsupported) program that emulated this functionality.
http://wasteland.rockdud.net/wlreset.html While all versions were nearly identical in terms of gameplay, the EGA PC port had upgraded graphics, although the C64 boasted the best sound. The IBM version differed by having an additional skill called "Combat Shooting" which could be bought only when a character was first created.
Legacy
Wasteland was a successful game, and has been included on numerous "best game" and "hall of fame" lists.
Computer Gaming WorldComputer Gaming World was founded in 1981 by Russell Sipe as a bimonthly publication. Early issues were typically 40-50 pages in length, written in a newsletter style, including submissions by game designers such as Joel Billings , Dan Bunten , and Chris Crawford...
Magazine awarded it the Adventure Game of the Year award in 1988, and ten years later in 1996, it named Wasteland the #9 computer game of all time. In its review, it cited "its ease of play, richness of plot, problem solving requirements, skill and task system, and graphic display" as elements of its excellence.
Wasteland was followed in 1990 by a less-successful intended sequel,
Fountain of DreamsFountain of Dreams is a 1990 computer role-playing game. Published by Electronic Arts, it was originally intended as a follow-up to the popular computer role-playing game Wasteland...
, set in post-war
FloridaFlorida is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States, bordering Alabama to the northwest and Georgia to the north. It was the 27th state admitted to the United States...
. Electronic Arts got cold feet at the last moment, and did not advertise it as a sequel to Wasteland; in fact, none of the creative cast from
Wasteland worked on
Fountain of Dreams. Interplay has described its game
FalloutFallout is a computer role-playing game produced by Tim Cain, developed by Black Isle Studios and published by Interplay in 1997. On August 19, 2009, the Fallout series was released on Valve's Steam download service...
as the spiritual successor to
Wasteland (as evidenced by the similar setting and that an NPC in
Fallout 2Fallout 2 is a computer role-playing game published by Interplay in 1998. The second game takes place in the year of 2241, 80 years after the first Fallout...
frequently recites combat messages from Wasteland).
Interplay also worked on a game called
Meantime for a while, which was based on the Wasteland "
game engineA game engine is a software system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and desktop operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X...
" but was not a continuation of the story. Coding of Meantime was nearly finished and a beta version was produced, but full production of the game was canceled when the 8-bit computer game market went into decline.
In 2003,
InXileinXile Entertainment was formed in late 2002 by Brian Fargo, a founder of Interplay Productions...
(founded by Wasteland's producer,
Brian FargoBrian Fargo is a computer game developer and notable game industry figure.In 1984 Fargo founded Interplay Productions, where he worked on most of Interplay's early games...
) acquired the rights to Wasteland from EA
http://wasteland.rockdud.net/wasteland.html.
On June 21, 2007, Brian Fargo said, "I am indeed looking into bringing back the game that spawned the
Fallout series. Stay tuned...." in an interview with fan site Duck and Cover.
External links
- Wasteland Wiki at Wikia
Wikia is a free web hosting service for wikis which targets communities, both those established offline and those with a purely online following...
- Another Wasteland Wiki
- Wasteland wikispaces details aspects of the game engine and data