back in the late 90s i had played Fallout and was hungry for more of the same. a few months later, this gem showed up on the abandonware site Home of the Underdogs as one of its undisputed Top Dogs. the DOS version's palette was unbelievably ugly in EGA, and the controls were painful to death with. but after 15 minutes was absolutely rapt. it really did feel like a low-res Fallout in hardcore mode.

Wasteland is notoriously difficult by design: there are no save games as we know them. there is *one* save: it saves the entire world state back to diskette. if your party membr is critically wounded in battle, that data is written to disk. if that member goes from critical to mortally wounded, and then dies a few hours later - they're now permadead. no resurrection. no savescumming: they're dead and will never come back. (there are workarounds of course: if things are going south fast, you can eject the diskette and reboot your computer before it has the chance to save which i have done, many many times.) 😅

the game world is big, the skill system complex, and the clues to advance the plot are scattered all over the world map. it is merciless, and demands absolute focus to keep your party alive.it makes Fallout look like a vacationer's weekend in arizona.

this is the kind of game a kid got as a gift from their parents when they were 12, and then spent the next two years trying to get to the end. i have never managed to finish the game in the 25+ years i've played it, despite trying many times.

despite, or maybe because of this, the game has always had a special place in my heart. like the way you love a mean kitty.

a decade ago i made a huge mistake: i gave my only folio/album version of Wasteland to a friend, who in turn, sold it on ebay. 🙄

after many years of hunting locally for a replacement copy, i never managed to find one. the vasty majority of Apple // software here is pirated, so it's rare to even find a boxed game. so i finally gave in and bought what turned out to be a pristine copy from a seller on ebay. it cost an arm and a leg, and i don't regret this even a bit.

here it is. an unbelievable amount of love and care has went into designing the packaging. Barry Jackson's cover and interior art goes the distance to define the mood and texture of the game.

#fallout #wasteland #postapocalyptic #vintageApple #retrocomputing #retrogaming

Old asphalt road Textures #Material #Pavement #Road #Textures #Seamless #Apocalyptic #Ground #Old #Pathway #Forest #Wasteland #Dirty #Street #Pbr #Factory #AssetStore

https://u3dn.com/packages/old-asphalt-road-textures-322162

Welcome to the Wasteland: A Thousand Gas Towns

https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-the-wasteland-a-thousand-gas-towns-a5eb9bc8dc1f

#HackerNews #Welcome #to #the #Wasteland: #A #Thousand #Gas #Towns #gas #towns #wasteland #storytelling #urban #decay #future #of #energy