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At the end of July 2003, Brian Fargo bought back the rights for Wasteland from Electronic Arts for his new company, InXile Entertainment, after already having bought The Bard's Tale in May. So there was some hope that this game will be available again in one form or another, or maybe there will be a genuine sequel. As of May 2006, nothing has materialized.
Wasteland was developed 1986–88 by Interplay for Electronic Arts. At that time, Interplay was a developer, but not a publisher. Later, they occasionally licensed it back to include it in some collection. They were always rather proud—justly proud—of this game, and that its rights are now back with the original developers is good news for every Wasteland fan. Unlike for Bard's Tale, however, there are no news yet about an upcoming official remake or sequel, even two years later.
It seems that the first version, for the Apple ][, came out in December 86, soon followed by one for the Commodore 64. The version for the IBM PC took a bit longer, it appeared in 88, and differed slightly; the graphics were better, and a few details in the game play might have been changed.
Wasteland is deeply rooted in the text adventure genre. You are somewhat tempted to call it a text adventure, even though you move your party around on a map. All actions are triggered by keyboard commands, dialog is accomplished by typing in keywords, and most of the atmosphere is conveyed by verbal messages. If you ignore them, you miss a lot. Read the messages you are treated to when walking through an abandoned house:
The wind has been blowing dust and leaves into this room so long that it is now almost 3 feet deep.
There used to be a door here a long time ago.
The old brick walls are slowly crumbling and falling apart.
Though rusty with age the hinge springs will close this door after you walk away.
The squeaks of rats bounce off the walls all around you.
You are walking on the door to this room.
The walls and ceilings all around you are covered with graffiti and bullet holes.
Don't wiggle! This chair is trying to fall apart.
This wall is covered with gang names and warnings to other gangs.
THE WHITE BOY IS #1 has been painted over the hundreds of bullet holes in this wall.
Crude pictures of nude girls and gang symbols are all over this wall.
Don't put anything on this table. I don't think it could take the weight of a feather.
Either that trash is moving or something is moving under it.
Lucky you! That snake could have been very nasty if it hung around to fight.
These old dusty shelves have stood here unused for more years than you have been alive.
Mind that there are four types of abandoned houses, depending on which side the entrance is, with slightly different messages, and that these houses serve no real purpose in the game. This is pure love for detail.
In general, the graphics are not very exiting—except for those
little cleverly animated portraits of people and creatures.
Unfortunately you can see them only in combat (encounter
) mode,
there is no dialog screen. Never mind—you can always start an
encounter, then let your whole party evade,
and nothing has
happened.
There are a few details in Wasteland that are significantly different from any other RPG I have ever played. It is good to know them beforehand, because they require different strategies:
loot bagsare placed. You only get new gear or money when you advance the story.
Wasteland got a sequel of sorts in Fountain
of Dreams, which, however, is said to have only about 20% of
the depth and breadth of the Wasteland game.
In part this is
because a comparison with Wasteland would turn out unfavorable
for many games, but additionally Fountain of Dreams suffers under
being too difficult. You can meet too tough enemies too early,
your party members soon cease to heal because of mutations. Still
it's worth trying it out.
There was a persistent rumor that a worthier sequel, Meantime, had been planned and started but never finished. While these rumors were technically true, it turned out that Meantime would have been a totally different game and hardly a sequel of Wasteland.
The third game to ever have used the Wasteland engine is Escape from Hell (no connection whatever with the at least two movies bearing this title). It has a different, and rather parodistic, theme, but might still appeal to Wasteland fans.
Nearly a decade later, Wasteland finally found an (unofficial) sequel in the Fallout games. Unfortunately, gameplay was reduced by about the same factor the interface (and the graphics, of course) were improved: Skills are no more improved by practice, no bashing enemies on the head with empty guns, no splitting up of the party, no control over the NPCs and thus battles that are more random than tactical. Nevertheless the Fallout games are excellent games in their own right and have gathered a fervent fan base (some of whom have never even heard of Wasteland).
Another game that should be interesting for most Wasteland fans is Shadowrun for the SNES. While of a slightly different genre (cyberpunk, not post-apocalyptic) I have always considered it the missing link between Wasteland and Fallout. It would be interesting to try to create a remake of Shadowrun with the Fallout editor.
Neuromancer and Circuit's Edge, while they are both adventures, not RPGs, and cyberpunk rather than post-apocalyptic, might well appeal to Wasteland fans.
Newcomer is a Commodore 64 game by a group of Hungarian enthusiasts, they list Wasteland as the first game that inspired them.
Then there is Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, a game even older than Wasteland. Originally written for the Apple ][, it was ported to the IBM PC soon. This version won't run correctly on anything but an original 4.77MHz 8086/88, but there is an ongoing project to make it playable on PCs of any speed. Beyond Castle Wolfenstein is an action game, not an RPG, but some of its gameplay aspects might make it attractive to Wasteland fans.
Naturally, the system requirements of this game are very low. I have played it on a 286 with 10MHz and 1MB RAM, it might even run on an XT, I don't know. Graphics are EGA, but according to a contemporary review, CGA is supported as well. I couldn't verify this. When I tried to run Wasteland in DOSBox in CGA setting, it wouldn't start. But maybe there was a seperate executable which has been, um, lost in time.
The only thing where speed matters is disk access. New maps and encounter graphics are loaded from disk. Running it from a RAM disk can make quite a difference.
On the other hand, I never encountered any problems when running it on a fast computer, something which is not true for many other old DOS games, except for the mouse. I would not recommend using a mouse at all, if it can be avoided.
Electronic Arts, Interplay and the designers of this game have struck a resonant cord with this product. Probably the most creative crew assembled to date included game designers and writers from both paper role playing, books about roleplaying, and novels on role playing. The result is a true classic, one of the greatest games ever made which stands the test of time.
Wasteland is widely recognized as one of the best games in the history of computer role-playing gaming. More than a decade after its release, people still play it, sometimes repeatedly. Fan sites are abound, and a webring exists to coordinate them. Fan fiction is still being written […] There's even a Wasteland-style MUD you can join.
With a unique skill-based system that lead to many excellent adventure-style puzzles, intriguing plot with tons of '80s references, and a truly epic scale full of many hidden surprises and subplots that guarantee hundreds of hours of play and replay value, Wasteland is simply a must-have. If you wonder where Fallout came from, this is its true predecessor (and a game I infinitely enjoy more than Fallout series). A classic in every sense of the word.
I enjoyed this game a lot, just like I enjoyed the third game in the Wasteland series: Fallout. I think that this is an awesome game, and the terrible graphics do not take away from the gameplay at all for me. I will give this game a straight 5, because for back then, this was awesome. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have.
As you carve rabid radioactive vermin into ground round, reduce desert scum into fine red mists with your AK-97 assault rifle, punch holes into robotic monstrosities with sabot rockets and proton axes, all the while watching your Geiger counter to avoid radioactive zones, you will uncover sinister plots which threaten the precarious balance of remaining life in the Wasteland!
Wasteland is one of those games that is going to take a long time to finish, but is well worth the effort. It's just quite simply a fantastic game all the way through. Detailed settings, puzzles that are challenging while not being overly tough, and tons of replay value make this a title that should be a part of any gamer's collection.
Wasteland was a Role Playing Game of a very different nature. Even though this was a very different game than most RPG fans were familiar with. It was a well put together game that was not only unique, but enjoyable to play as well. One could easily waste several hours getting wrapped up in Wasteland, happily blowing away mutated rodents, vicious marauders, and robot killing machines. If you want to try something a little different, give Wasteland a try.
A fascinating science fiction story set in a post-nuclear world of disintegrating technology, dysfunctional society and mutant organisms, Wasteland was the first game many of us played where the other members of the player's adventuring party acted likerealpeople instead of inventory cabinets with names and automatons with skill sets. Ask the party to divvy up the cash and one or more might refuse. Try to get a party member to cough up his/her last clip of ammo? No way!
Two revival projects started in spring 2002 independently. It seems that neither survived the summer of the same year, but their sites are still up.
Additionally it turned out that game programming in Java is much more difficult than I had ever imagined. It's not that I don't know Java, but creating a game is so much different from creating applications that I really had problems to realize what I wanted.