Digital distribution service Good Old Games is celebrating its "Fallout week" now, starting off with deals on the Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics games, and this, a retrospective look on the one that started it all.

Have a read and see how the now-deceased Black Isle Studios developed this masterpiece, but don't cry! Some of the team that made the originals moved on to Obsidian, who have just been revealed to be working on a brand new Fallout game.

By the mid-1990s, the once-fertile landscape of computer role-playing games had degenerated into a desolate wasteland. The genre was stagnating, with many developers embracing regurgitation over innovation after achieving success with a particular formula, or flocking to consoles in an attempt to cash in on the success of Japanese RPGs.

In answer to the need for a revolution, developer Black Isle Studios and publisher Interplay released Fallout, a post-apocalyptic RPG that took computer gamers looking for something fresh by storm. "I think Fallout hit several gaming sweet spots," explains Fallout designer Tim Cain. "It was open-ended. Today that would be called a sandbox game, but back then, we just knew that we were getting tired of linear RPGs where everyone played the same story in the same order with the same encounters. You could vary your character class, but that really just changed your damage--you killed the monster with a fireball instead of a sword."

chautemoc via gog.com »