"Welcome to the Wasteland. I hope you're wearing your flak vest!"
Wasteland is a post-nuclear war computer role-playing game set in the post-World War III southwest United States of America. Your party of newly graduated Desert Rangers will explore this desert wasteland on a mission of reconaissance for the Ranger Center, the last bastion of law and order left in the year 2087.
As you explore the radioactive dunes and ruins of Nevada and Arizona's once-great cities, you will learn new desert survival skills, solve mind-bending puzzles, reduce desert scum into fine red mists with your AK-97 assault rifles and laser carbines, punch holes into robotic monstrosities with rocket-propelled grenades and proton axes, and recruit characters into your squad, all while watching your Geiger counter to avoid the deadly hot-zones. You will uncover devious and sinister plots which threaten to destroy the precarious balance of remaining life in the Wasteland!
Greetings! I'm Ranger Ben. You've just reached my ongoing Internet effort to establish an online presence for the greatest computer role-playing game of all time (in my radioactive opinion). Here I hope to preserve and perpetuate the fandom of Wasteland. At this site is located what I believe to be the most comprehensive collection of Wasteland information, hints, maps, fan fiction, and files. However, as Wasteland has not entered into public domain, those of you looking for a free download of the game itself will not find it here.
Thank you for stopping by. If you would like to send me an e-mail, visit the Comm Center.
[December 6, AD 2022] The HQ-Grid is now open source! Visit https://github.com/wastelandrangerhq/hq-grid to submit a pull request via GitHub for any contributions to this community site.
[October 5, AD 2019] Added Fallout 3 chronicle Tycho's Saga: Conscience of a Wastelander!
Related note: I know many parts of the HQ-Grid have fallen into 404. I've been trying to fix broken links, but if you find some I didn't find, please contact me so I can fix them in the next update. Thanks!
Updated: Main page, Reading Room.
Read past updates to this site here.
1984: Brian Fargo founds Interplay Productions.
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1988: Wasteland is programmed
at Interplay Productions
under the leadership of Alan Pavlish. It is distributed by Electronic Arts for the Apple ][
platform.
Wasteland is also released for the Commodore 64 platform.
The game is ported to the IBM platform by
Michael Quarles in A.D. 1988. (See image of IBM PC edition box
cover, right. Image is also a hyperlink to a bigger-sized image of
box.) Wasteland becomes the number one best-seller of the year.
Developers of the game pose for a publicity photo. Several versions are out there.
Some are below.
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Ken's caption for the middle picture: "In my humble opinion, this is one of the best pictures of me ever taken. I'm the guy
wearing the leather vest and the brown fedora. Mike Stackpole, best-selling Star Wars novelist is in the black leather jacket.
Alan Pavlish, chief programmer is the red-haired guy with the bandana. It was 110 degrees F. out there on the dry lake bottom that
afternoon, and we were all dressed up in twenty pounds of leather and heavy clothing. Those were the days! This picture was taken
in 1987." [Source]
1988: Wasteland wins
Computer Gaming World's Adventure Game of the Year.
[unknown]: Development of Meantime begins on the Apple ][ platform.
This game, originally thought to be a sequel to Wasteland, is never
finished. Only in 2002 was it made widespread knowledge that this game
was not, in fact a sequel to Wasteland.
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1990: Electronic Arts releases a game that
uses a similar game engine as Wasteland. This game,
Fountain of Dreams, is set in post-war
Florida and attempted to play off the success of Wasteland.
With significantly smaller game replayability, plot, and scenario,
this game nonetheless explores the scenario where not only the creatures
have mutated, but you have, too. (See image of IBM PC edition box cover,
left. That's a scan of my copy's box-cover with my name in lower right corner
blurred out. I bought the game new off the shelf, probably at Babbage's, heh.
:) Image is also a hyperlink to a bigger-sized image of box.)
September, 1993: Ghostwheel MOO, a
post-apocalyptic MOO heavily influenced by Wasteland, opens its doors.
1995:
Wasteland tours the computer gaming world as part of the
Interplay 10 Year Anthology CD, a collection of award-winning Interplay
games on CD-ROM. (See image of box cover, right.)
If you have this CD-ROM, then you have the "post-setup files"
version of Wasteland. You'll want to check out the
Unofficial Wasteland Reset Program which
simulates the setup.exe program, which allows you to reset the maps (and
thus win multiple times with the same crew of Rangers).
September, 1996: In September of 1996
Yahoo! creates a hierarchy listing
exclusively for Wasteland. It's moved around a bit, and who uses
directories any more anyway, vs. a search engine, but still,
its present location is here,
and it looks like there's only one link left. :)
November, 1996:
Computer Gaming World magazine releases a list of the top
150 computer games of all time. They rank Wasteland 9th.
Read the review of Wasteland by
Computer Gaming World. Additionally, a variant release of
the magazine has a "CG-ROM" with demos and games on it, and the
"post-setup files" are included. Here are some tips on installing the November 1996 CG-ROM copy of Wasteland.
If you want to reset your games, try using the Unofficial Wasteland Reset Program.
October, 1997: Interplay Productions releases Fallout, a post-nuclear war
role-playing game. (See image of box cover, right.) Look familiar?
Yes, it's Wasteland for the 90s!
Also this month, Computer Gaming World Magazine distributes
Wasteland again, including it on the CG-ROM bundled with their
October 1997 issue. Coincidence? I don't think so!
The files on the disc are the
"post-setup files," which means you cannot reset the maps or characters,
etc. This time, they also forgot to include the paragraph book
entries. (You can find the complete text of the
Paragraph Book entries at the
Wasteland Underground.)
January, 1998:
Computer Gaming World's January 1998 issue has a Hall of
Fame on page 370.
Listed among this "Cooperstown of Computer Games" which "broke the
records, established the benchmarks, and held gamers in delighted
trances for hours untold," is Wasteland. "Derived from
Mike Stackpole's
Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes, this is the definitive
post-apocalyptic RPG," the article notes.
Also this month, Interplay
re-releases Wasteland in a new collection of computer role-playing games,
through their DragonPlay division (which was later regrouped as
Black Isle Studios). It is called
The Ultimate RPG Archives. (See image of box cover, right.)
March, 1998:
Enter the Wasteland Ring, a web ring
devoted to Wasteland home pages. Thanks to Ranger T. Gray for the work in
putting this together. Link your site today!
September 22, 1998:
Snake Squeezins,
an eGroup (now a Yahoo! Group) for discussing Wasteland,
is created by Ranger Ben. (Yeah, me!) It's still around, and hosts
the biggest number of dedicated, active and talkative Wasteland fans.
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October 30, 1998: Black Isle studios releases
Fallout 2 (See image of
box cover, left. Image is also a hyperlink to a bigger-sized image of box.)
November 19, 1998:
Desolation!, a Wasteland MUD,
opens its doors for development. (See Desolation! logo and link, right.)
January, 2000:
Wasteland is inducted into the gamespy Hall of Fame.
February 1, 2000:
MobyGames reviews Wasteland in
their second Feature Article.
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March, 2001:
Microforte' and 14° East,
in partnership with Interplay, releases Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, a
strategy game that takes place between Fallout 1 and 2. Characters in
this game are new recruits in the Brotherhood of Steel.
January 24, 2002:
Brian Fargo, CEO of Interplay Productions, resigns. For those keeping score,
Brian Fargo founded Interplay in 1984 and was
part
of the original design team for Wasteland.
Read the full story of his resignation
(archived from an article no longer found on http://ocregister.com).
March, 2002:
The Flangy News announces the arrival of a port of Wasteland for the Game Boy Advance. This has to be the best
Wasteland hoax of all time!
April 2, 2002:
Wasteland receives a bit of free press from GameSpy.com, in part II of their article on Computer Role-Playing Games, by
Andrew S. Bub. Part II is entitled "Computer Role-Playing Games - Part II:
Gold Rush & Beyond." Page one has the sub-heading: "SSI's Gold Rush,
A Vast Wasteland & The Underworld of Ultima."
June 13, 2003:
Brian Fargo and his new game company, inXile, acquire the rights to
Wasteland with the United States Patent Office. Soon after, Mr. Fargo
shows up at Snake Squeezins
to ask for comments about the game from its loyal fans.
He notes the reason he didn't get the rights sooner was that Electronic
Arts was sitting on them. When they expired, Konami grabbed it for use
with their Yu-Gi-Oh series, but they were kind enough to let him have the
trademark back. And the new Wasteland will be "darker in nature than the
first one," and touts that it will be "very much an old school RPG that
uses the skill systems, open ended nature of design, and puts the player
into a world that is not black and white but shades of grey."
Fall, 2003:
Interplay again starts work on Fallout 3 and calls the game "project Van
Buren."
December 9, 2003:
Interplay shuts down it's Black Isle Studios division, and Van Buren
along with it.
January 14, 2004: Interplay releases Fallout: Brotherhood
of Steel, a Xbox and Playstation 2 console game very loosely based on
Fallout's world, is released. It's a third
person shooter and reports are that it has lots of factual errors in
portraying the Fallout world and doesn't really have much to do with the
previous Fallout titles.
July 12, 2004:
Bethesda Softworks LLC, a ZeniMax
Media company, announces it has licensed the rights to the Fallout
franchise from Interplay Entertainment Corporation. Full press release.
October 28, 2008:
Bethesda Game Studios' Fallout 3 published by Bethesda Softworks.
Many Downloadable Content expansions are also released.
October 19, 2010:
Obsidian Entertainment's Fallout: New Vegas published by Bethesda Softworks.
Many Downloadable Content expansions are also released.
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March, 2012:
inXile Entertainment kicks off their Wasteland 2 web presence.
Their blog is called The Wasteland Chronicles. Their forums
are named The Wasteland Survival Guide.
Brian asks me to moderate the forums. I'm honored, and totally ecstatic to be involved.
A kickstarter campaign soon followed. They hoped to raise $900,000 USD. They
reached their goal in 42 hours, 30 minutes. Final count is over 3 million dollars between kickstarter and paypal
donations! Expected release date is October, 2013.
Pavlish, St. Andre, Stackpole, Danforth, and Dugan are all invited to be on the design
team by Fargo. Fargo also snags Chris Avellone of Fallout fame. Awesome!
April, 2012:
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Scorpitron 2.0! Yikes!
This site is the brainchild of one person, and is maintained by the same: me! In my radioactive circle of friends, I am known as Ranger Ben. I have played Wasteland on the PC since 1989 and got the crazy idea to put up a web page about it when I was introduced to the Internet in 1995. When not editing, revising, and writing e-mails about Wasteland, I work a civilian job as a software engineer for a retail software company.
Special thanks go out to my older brother for coming up with the name for this site back in its infancy. Also, special thanks to my younger brother who has won Wasteland more times than he can count, and as a result is one of my best sources for all radioactive things.
And finally, the current look and feel of The HQ-Grid could not have been possible without the contribution of Ranger J. Tirrell. Read all about his contributions to this site at the The Wasteland Ranger HQ-Grid Site Graphics page.
Additional thanks go out to the multitudes of persons who've written with comments about and contributions to this site, including Alan Pavlish, Ken St. Andre, Liz Danforth, Nishan Hossepian, Mike Stackpole, Bruce Schlickbernd, Charles Weidmann III, Burger Becky Heineman, Bill Dugan, and the folks past and present from Interplay, EA and inXile.
- ⇒ Front Desk
- Comm Center
- Underground
- Reading Room
- File Room
- End Status
- Rec Center
- Site Graphics
- Links
- ⇒ Wasteland
- Meantime
- Fountain of Dreams
- Fallout
wastelandrangerhq.github.io/hq-grid is hosted by GitHub Pages.
This webpage complies with the W3C XHTML standards.
We rated with RSACi!
All pages in this domain are Copyright © 1995- Bernard Assaf.
Interplay, the Interplay logo, "By Gamers. For Gamers." are trademarks of Interplay Entertainment Corp. All Rights Reserved.
Wasteland and Wasteland artwork © 1988 Interplay Productions. All rights reserved.
Wasteland packaging artwork, Fountain of Dreams, and all Fountain of Dreams artwork are Copyright © 1990 Electronic Arts. All rights reserved.
Fallout and Fallout artwork are Copyright © 1997 Interplay Productions. Fallout is a trademark of Interplay Entertainment Corp. All rights reserved.
Fallout 2 and Fallout 2 artwork are Copyright © 1998 Interplay Productions, Inc. Fallout 2 is a trademark of Interplay Productions. All rights reserved.
Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel © 2001 Interplay Entertainment Corp. Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel is a trademark of Interplay Entertainment Corp. All Rights Resrved.
Listed at
Interplay's Assorted Gamers page.
Awarded Dreg of the Day for October 29, 1996 by Dana Hughes. (Dregs of the
Net website now defunct.)
gamespy used these pages extensively
for their
January 1999
review of Wasteland.