Wasteland (game)

Cover of the game

Wasteland is a post-nuclear computer role-playing game created by Interplay and published by Electronic Arts on January 27, 1987. It was released for Apple II, Commodore 64 and Microsoft DOS.

Despite some references, Wasteland is not considered part of the Fallout universe, instead serving as part of Fallout's inspiration.

Wasteland background

From the game's manual:

Tensions grew with the coming of 1998. The United States' Citadel Starstation was slated to be fully operational by March. Soviet charges that the space station was merely a military launching platform alarmed a number of nonaligned nations. The right wing governments in the South and Central Americas, many of them set up by the U.S. during the Drug Wars (1987-1993), pledged their support to the U.S. The NATO nations, including the new African members also declared their alliance with the U.S. That move forced most of the remaining neutral powers to join the Soviet protest. In six short weeks, only Switzerland, Sweden, and Ireland continued to declare themselves neutral nations.

Two weeks before Citadel was due for full operation, the station transmitted a distress signal. Immediately after the message was sent, most of the satellites orbiting the planet were swept clean from the sky, leaving the great powers blind. In military panic, each sent 90 percent of their nuclear arsenals skyward. Although the destruction was tremendous, it was not complete. Pockets of civilization remained, some even oblivious to the military exchange.

On the same day that the U.S. and Soviet Union were attempting to extinguish each other, a company of U.S. Army Engineers were in the southwestern deserts building transportation bridges over dry riverbeds. They worked deep in the inhospitable desert valleys, surrounded by a number of survivalist communities. Located directly south of their position on that day was a newly-constructed federal prison. In addition to housing the nation's criminals condemned to death, the prison contained light industrial manufacturing facilities.

Shortly after the nuclear attack began, the Engineers, seeking shelter, took over the federal prison and expelled the prisoners into the desolate desert to complete their sentences. As the weeks passed, they invited the nearby survivalist communities to join them and to help them build a new society. Because of each community's suspicions towards one another, times were difficult at first. But as time nurtured trust, this settlement -- which came to be known as Ranger Center -- grew to be one of the strongest outposts. Ranger Center even proved powerful enough to repel the hands of rancorous criminals who repeatedly attacked in attempts to reclaim what was once "rightfully theirs".

The citizens of Ranger Center, after first believing that they were the only ones who survived the nuclear maelstrom, soon realized that communities beyond the desert's grip had also survived, Because they had such success in constructing a new community, they felt compelled to help other survivors rebuild and live in peace.

Toward this end, the Desert Rangers, in the great tradition of the Texas and Arizona Rangers a century before, were born.

References in Fallout games

Entire Fallout Series

• Deathclaws — a homage to the "shadowclaws"
• Red Ryder BB Gun (simply BB Gun in Fallout 3)
• The Brotherhood of Steel first appeared in Wasteland as a purely hostile NPC faction called the Guardians

Fallout

• Dugan, the Nuka-Cola addict
• Tycho, the Desert Ranger
• Gizmo — a homage to Fat Freddy — somebody similar to him was mentioned by Tycho as mobster in charge in Las Vegas, Nevada
• ZAX — an homage to VAX, the humanform robot

Fallout 2

• Chrissy - tribute to Christina, an Uzi-packing character from Needles

Van Buren

• Helen Wheels — truckers, smugglers (together with Eddie "Crazy Horse" Galensky)
• Job — Mr. Handy administrative police robot in Denver
• Christina Royce - cut-off CNPC, mature Chrissy from Fallout 2
• ZAX - once again, two units (Twin Mothers, Boulder)
• the Nursery - a homage to the Agricultural Center
• Circle Junction - a homage to Rail Nomads and their camp
• US Engineers mentioned together with military prison at Tibbets design document

Fallout 3

• ZAX unit appears as President John Henry Eden's mainframe
• Moira Brown commissions the personal character to write The Wasteland Survival Guide, which shares the name of the real-life Wasteland (game)'s hint and walk-through book
• The Cloning Lab in Vault 108 may be a homage to the cloning lab in Wasteland's Sleeper Base
• The Firelance is a reference to a metafictitious weapon in the "decoy" storyline in Wasteland's paragraphs book