Fallout

Release Date: 1997
Developer: Black Isle Studios
Distributor: Interplay Entertainment
Platforms: MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Mac OS X
Description: A computer role-playing game with a post-apocalyptic setting in the mid-22nd century, featuring an alternate history which deviates some time after World War II, where technology, politics and culture followed a different course. Fallout draws much from 1950s pulp magazines, science fiction and superhero comic books. For example, computers use vacuum tubes instead of transistors; energy weapons exist and resemble those used by Flash Gordon; the Vault Dweller’s main style of dress is a blue jumpsuit with a yellow line going down the center of the chest and along the belt area. Fallout’s menu interfaces are designed to resemble advertisements and toys of the same period; for example, the illustrations on the character sheet mimic those of the board game Monopoly, and one of the game’s loading screens is an Indian Head test card. There are also many references to post-apocalyptic science fiction, such as Mad Max or Radioactive Dreams. Also, although the time frame of Wasteland (a similarly-themed 1988 game) is completely different from Fallout—and despite the fact that the game’s designers deny that Fallout or Fallout 2 take place in the same universe as Wasteland—there are many references to the events and the style of Wasteland in the Fallout series, which is why Fallout is sometimes regarded as the spiritual successor to Wasteland.