Fallout 1
retrospective
Crawl Out Through The Fallout
From a one-man side project to the sets of Hollywood, we trace the history of gaming’s biggest post-apocalyptic phenomenon
It’s 6 p.m. and you’re ready to go home after a long day at work. On the way out, you smell pizza coming from one of the conference rooms. You tell yourself you’ll swing in, say hello, and grab a quick slice – after all, who can say no to free pizza? However, one of your coworkers is gearing up to share a breakthrough he’s spent the last six months working on: a new isometric sprite engine. You already grabbed a slice, so it would be rude to just leave, so you take a seat. Little did you know, you would be witnessing history.
Anything Goes
At that point in 1994, programmer Tim Cain’s primary job at Interplay Productions, the development studio behind Wasteland and The Bard’s Tale, was making installers for some of the studio’s games. Outside of regular work duties, Cain had spent the last six months creating a new engine. He showed it to artist Leonard Boyarsky, who suggested they make a game out of it. Unfortunately, Cain was forbidden from recruiting additional workers, as everyone at Interplay was assigned to other projects.