Wasteland

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Wasteland
Logo Wasteland.png
Studio United StatesUnited States Interplay Productions
Publisher United StatesUnited States Electronic Arts
Senior Developer Michael A. Stackpole , Alan Pavlish , Brian Fargo , Ken St. Andre
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 1988
platform Commodore 64 , Apple II , DOS
Windows , Mac OS , Linux
genre Computer role playing game
Game mode Single player
control Joystick , keyboard , mouse
medium 5¼ " floppy disk , download
language English
Current version Patch 2

Wasteland is a computer role-playing game developed for the Apple II by Interplay and distributed by Electronic Arts in 1988 . In the same year it was also released for Commodore 64 and DOS . After 26 years, the successor Wasteland 2 was released on September 19, 2014 .

action

Wasteland is set in the middle of the 21st century after a nuclear war between the USA and the Soviet Union . Large parts of the world have in Wasteland ( Wasteland transformed) in which it is to survive. The four main characters are Desert Rangers, remnants of the United States Army that survived the nuclear holocaust and come from the deserts of the southwestern United States. They are supposed to investigate a number of incidents in the desert. Your journey takes you to the last enclaves of human civilization, including post-atomic Las Vegas .

Gameplay

In this game you control a small group of initially four people through a post-apocalyptic environment. Most of the time you look at the landscape from above, which is shown in tile graphics , and move around it step by step. For combat situations, a frontal view is switched over, in which you get a brief overview of your own characters, and the respective opponent and the actions are visually displayed. The fights take place turn-based, whereby in addition to the equipment, character attributes and a skill system come into play.

Additional characters can be recruited during the game, up to a maximum of seven group members. Such mercenaries , however, do not always behave as intended by the player and are able to refuse to execute orders, an early version of personality among NPCs .

Most of the game is in a non-linear form. A special feature was the high proportion of decision-making options for the player. For many situations in the game there are several solutions that deliver different side results. In doing so, Wasteland broke the pattern that was common in role-playing games at the time that there was only one valid solution for every problem and made the freedom of choice, which was otherwise mainly known from pen & paper role -playing games, available in computer role-playing games.

Parts of the narrative were published in the form of a storybook that was included with the original game. Thus, the storage space bottlenecks of the data carriers of the time were bypassed. If necessary, a point in the book is referred to in the game so that the player can read the relevant section for himself. Since all progress in the game was permanently recorded on the game disk, the player had to make a copy of his original disk before starting the game in order not to have to overwrite it.

development

Wasteland was developed by Interplay Entertainment, a California development studio co-founded by Brian Fargo , with Alan Pavlish as the main programmer for the Apple II.

Due to the strong similarity with The Bard's Tale , also co-developed by Brian Fargo, Wasteland is regarded as the technical successor. The turn-based combat system, the party mode and the screen structure were adopted, but not the (simplified) 3D display. The atmospheric portrayal of the post-atomic Holocaust is also reminiscent of films like Mad Max from 1980, even if the background stories have little in common.

After five years of development, it was released by Electronic Arts in 1988 . Porting to the C64 and MS-DOS also took place in 1988 . Interplay received a fee of 28,000 US dollars for the DOS port. Sometimes the first release date is incorrectly stated as 1987 because that year is stated on the title screen of the Apple II version.

In terms of game mechanics, all variants are practically identical, but the EGA version for MS-DOS had improved graphics (there was also a CGA version) and the C64 version had the best sound. The DOS version also differed in the additional selectable ability "Combat Shooting".

Re-releases

Wasteland was re-released in 1995 as part of Interplay's 10 Year Anthology: Classic Collection and in 1998 in the Ultimate RPG Archives through Interplay's DragonPlay label. These bundles, which were put together later, lacked the original setup program, which had allowed the game card to be reset and at the same time to keep the group of heroes. The hobby programmer Jeremy Reaban wrote an unofficial program that reinserts this missing functionality.

On November 12, 2013, the game was re-released by inXile Entertainment , Brian Fargo's new company and now the rights holder of the Wasteland rights, via the online distribution platform GOG.com under the title Wasteland: The Original Classic for Windows and Mac OS. The next day the provider Steam followed for the platforms Windows, Mac OS and Linux. This version also includes some optional updates such as spoken paragraph texts, music and revised portraits.

Since the game in this version still partly critical bugs suffers a fan developed a unofficial fix that fixes a critical timing and the crash of inXile in the official patch has been integrated second

reception

Wasteland is considered to be the first post-apocalyptic computer role-playing game. The American magazine Computer Gaming World praised the plot, the character system, the numerous possible solutions and the graphic display, among other things. According to Brian Fargo, the game sold around 100,000 times for Apple II and Commodore 64 in 2012.

Computer Gaming World named the game “Adventure Game of the Year” in October 1988, and in November 1996 it was also listed as 9th of the 150 best computer games of all time. In July 2000, Wasteland was named one of the "25 best PC games of all time" by the American online magazine IGN and took 24th place in the listing.

successor

Planned development of successors

Although the developers wanted a sequel, it did not materialize due to trademark problems. The rights to Wasteland remained with Publisher Electronic Arts . When Interplay Entertainment expanded its business from a pure development studio to a publisher, the two companies did not come to an agreement. Instead, EA pursued the goal of developing a successor itself.

Electronic Arts released Fountain of Dreams for MS-DOS in 1990 , a Florida-based post-apocalyptic game that was very similar to Wasteland 's design. It was therefore also called an unofficial sequel, although no member of the Wasteland design team was involved. EA subsequently denied all connections between the two games.

The never published Meantime for the Apple II was based on the Wasteland source code , but was supposed to be about time travel.

Interplay's Fallout

Interplay's 1997 RPG Fallout is considered the spiritual successor to Wasteland . It references a lot of the game's content and was ultimately created because Interplay CEO Fargo was unable to resolve trademark issues with publisher Electronic Arts. Three more games in the Fallout series appeared under Interplay . In 2004, the license for another Fallout successor was then transferred and in 2007 the entire Interplay brand was transferred to Bethesda Softworks and continued.

InXiles Wasteland 2

After years of unsuccessful attempts, Brian Fargo managed to secure the rights to Wasteland for his new company InXile in 2003 .

Fargo announced in June 2007 that he wanted to bring back the game ( Wasteland ) that inspired Fallout .

After a long and unsuccessful search for a publisher who could cover the production costs, the financing for Wasteland 2 was finally secured in early 2012 with the help of the crowdfunding online platform Kickstarter.com .

Wasteland 3

In November 2016, a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.com to finance a third part was successfully completed. Publication is scheduled for spring 2020.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Kristan Reed: Fallout's Forgotten Ancestor ( English ) In: IGN . News Corp . February 25, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2012.
  2. ↑ Matt Barton: Matt Chat 90: Wasteland and Fallout with Brian Fargo ( English ) In: Matt Chat . January 23, 2011. Retrieved October 13, 2013.
  3. ↑ Wasteland - This is how cheap the PC port was for Electronic Arts - GameStar. Retrieved August 3, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Interplay's 10 Year Anthology for DOS (1993) ( English ) MobyGames. Retrieved July 31, 2013.
  5. ↑ The Ultimate RPG Archives - PC - GameSpy ( English ) Uk.pc.gamespy.com. January 31, 1998. Retrieved July 31, 2013.
  6. ↑ The Unofficial Wasteland Reset Program ( English ) Wasteland.rockdud.net. October 14, 1998. Retrieved July 31, 2013.
  7. ↑ Release: Wasteland 1 - The Original Classic . GOG.com . November 12, 2013. Retrieved November 12, 2013.
  8. ↑ Now Available on Steam - Wasteland 1 - The Original Classic ( English ) Steam . November 13, 2013. Retrieved November 23, 2013.
  9. ↑ Known Issues FAQ (English)
  10. ↑ Kasper Brandt: Fixing frequent freezing of Wasteland 1 when using mouse ( English ) In: The Gödelian Knot . poizan.dk. November 27, 2013. Retrieved December 8, 2013: "UPDATE2: This has been incorporated into patch 2. Wasteland (the original) has a problem where it randomly freezes after playing for some time."
  11. ↑ Wasteland Patch 2 on steamcommunity.com (English)
  12. ↑ Wesley Yin-Poole: Wasteland 2 Kickstarter ends with over $ 3m raised ( English ) In: EuroGamer.net . EuroGamer Network. April 17, 2012. Retrieved April 17, 2012.
  13. ↑ William Kritzen: Wasted in the Wasteland , Computer Gaming World . May 1988, pp. 28-29. 
  14. ↑ a b Wasteland 2 . Project page on Kickstarter.
  15. ^ Computer Gaming World's 1988 Game of the Year Awards , Computer Gaming World . October 1988, p. 54. 
  16. ↑ 150 Best Games of All Time , Computer Gaming World . November 1996, p. 65. 
  17. ↑ The Top 25 PC Games of All Time . IGN. July 17, 2000. Retrieved February 10, 2010.
  18. ↑ a b Wasteland 2 RPG Codex Interview with Brian Fargo - Part 1 ( English ) In: RPGCodex . February 25, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2012.
  19. ↑ a b Shawn Schuster: Kickstarting the future of game publishing: An interview with Brian Fargo ( English ) In: Joystiq . AOL . March 15, 2012. Archived from the original on February 19, 2015. Retrieved on March 15, 2012.
  20. ^ Matt Barton: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part 2: The Golden Age (1985-1993) ( English ) In: Gamasutra . UBM plc. February 23, 2007. Retrieved September 28, 2011.
  21. ↑ Thomas "Brother None" Beekers: Wasteland Kickstarter Project Interview with Brian Fargo ( English ) In: No Mutants Allowed . February 24, 2012. Archived from the original on March 1, 2012. Retrieved on March 15, 2012.
  22. ↑ Bethesda Softworks to Develop and Publish Fallout 3 ( Memento of March 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  23. ↑ Commission File Number 0-24363 INTERPLAY ENTERTAINMENT CORP. (English)
  24. ^ Rus McLaughlin: IGN Presents the History of Fallout . In: IGN . News Corp. . January 28, 2009. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
  25. ↑ Name rights entry 78262017 Wasteland . United States Patent and Trademark Office , last accessed March 14, 2012.
  26. ↑ Tal Blevins: Fond Memories: Wasteland ( English ) In: IGN . News Corp . August 28, 2008. Retrieved March 15, 2012.
  27. ↑ Fargo Confirms It! . In: Duck and Cover . June 21, 2007. Retrieved June 21, 2007.
  28. ↑ PC News: Fallout forefather Wasteland being resurrected? - ComputerAndVideoGames.com (English)
  29. ↑ Wasteland 3 - Crowdfunding campaign ended successfully. In: PlaystationInfo.de. November 6, 2016, accessed September 7, 2019 .
  30. ^ André Linken: Wasteland 3: The release period for the RPG is limited. In: PC Games . June 12, 2019, accessed September 7, 2019 .