Ode to Wasteland

by Jarred Walton on 11/8/2013 9:41 PM EST
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  • dylan522p - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link

    I guess I have no excuse but to finnaly play this legendary game.
  • Aegeon - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link

    As far as availability for the general public is concerned, GOG and presumably Steam as well are releasing the game on November 12th.
    http://www.gog.com/game/wasteland_the_classic_orig...

    (I'm another backer who is taking advantage of my free copy this weekend.)
  • nerd1 - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link

    I always envied my friends who had better machines and can play the latest origin games
  • IanCutress - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link

    Load "*",8,1 ? You were spoiled... "Press play on tape!"
  • dac7nco - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link

    Jesus, I last typed that 25-years ago... I have my C64 in storage for some reason... can't toss it.
  • JarredWalton - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link

    Hahaha... I remember the "Press play on tape" as well. Thankfully that only lasted a couple years before we got the floppies. I can't remember now how long it took to load a game from tape, but 15 minutes seems about right.
  • dac7nco - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link

    I could eat dinner with my Mom, and the tape would be loaded when the dishes were done... then I got a 1541 drive, and never waited again.
  • ostrand - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link

    Wasteland wasn't available on tape for C64 afaik. I just regret I sold the computer together with all the games - I absolutely loved the artwork on the Wasteland floppy package and the stories in the hint book.
  • risa2000 - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link

    Never played the original (though I played many Sierra and Origin games back then), so reading the last screenshot reminds me The Magnificent Seven rather than any game :)
  • LordHaHa - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link

    Didn't have a C64, had an Atari 800XL. Still remember flipping sides on the 5.25 floppies.

    Didn't have Wasteland on the XL but I did get around to playing it in the early 90s, when Interplay released a "10th Anniversary" CD with it and 9 other titles on it (including Bard's Tale 1). It took a few tries...one fun way of dying early on was walking into Darwin from the south (getting nuked in the process) and then getting SMGed by the cops in town. I got fairly decent at it eventually, getting to Vegas without a hitch but getting past the sewers were killer. Took a long time before I finally got by that part.

    I'm really happy Fargo and co. are doing an updated re-release of WL1 as a part of their recent efforts. I realize there are budget, time in many cases and occasionally legal limitations, but it'd be great if more companies took the time to do that for classic titles. A lot of people simply won't even touch a DOS game even though you many times just need to drag the EXE to a DOSBox shortcut, let alone the pain trying to get some Win9x titles to run with modern hardware and/or WinXP+ systems.

    Anyway, here's hoping that WL2 is another 1000lb-er. Might not run on an IBM AT like originally advertised but I'm still excited.

    PS: I'd agree with Jarred in his sentiments that BT is a little crusty, once you get a powerful party its quite fun but getting to that point is fairly difficult (if for no other reason than the location that levels you up is hidden, for a start).
  • JarredWalton - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link

    BT2 isn't quite as bad, but BT1 you can't even tell which buildings are important from the side, so you have to turn left/right all the time to look at the buildings and figure out if it's the place you're looking for. Healing is expensive (exorbitant), monster fights even early on can wipe you out in a hurry, and you're basically running around a maze in a town for a good chunk of the early game. Yes, you have a map, but it's not quite as useful as you might think! Hahaha.
  • LordHaHa - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link

    Yeah, nothing's labeled on the map so on your first run through or two you are guess if you are heading to a bar or Roscoe's. And if you get to Roscoe's you can't afford to regen your magic there until you are high level.

    Another thing, aside from the difficulty (8 skeleton group as your first opponents? Back to chargen!) is you can sequence break in a game that's really not designed for it. Remember figuring out the Mad God's name before for exploring the basement below the bar and getting into their Temple. Needless to say that did not end well.

    Although from a difficulty standpoint Dragon Wars (originally a BT development before having a name change halfway through development) takes the cake. Same tough enemies at start, your party starts the game buck naked, magic is illegal and thus hard to get at the start, you can beat Skyrim and all the DLC in the time it takes to get to Level 2, and if you get a death that's pretty much it for that ex-character.
  • ssiu - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link

    You should check out gog.com (Re: A lot of people simply won't even touch a DOS game even though you many times just need to drag the EXE to a DOSBox shortcut, let alone the pain trying to get some Win9x titles to run with modern hardware and/or WinXP+ systems.)
  • augiem - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link

    Looks cool! I have been playing games since Popcorn on the TRS-80, but I have to admit I missed this one. Looking from the pics, just from the graphics and screen layouts it reminds me a bit of Mars Saga, Battletech Crescent Hawk's Inception, and the map screen makes me think of Omega and Times of Lore (a bit). (All of the above mentioned games are excellent too.) I'm gonna have to play this!
  • takethree - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link

    Mars Saga! I remember that one. I had just finished Wasteland and started getting withdrawal symptoms but I didn't want to play it all over again. Mars Saga did just fine. Not as great but very good too and enjoyable and pretty different. I wouldn't mind a Mars Saga 2 as well!
  • Brutalizer - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link

    Here you can play Wasteland1 online in a web browser:
    http://dosdose.com/game/436/wasteland/

    I remember the first W1 install file was like 2MB big or so. And now the new updated version is 300MB? Times are a changing...
  • JarredWalton - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link

    Lots of audio files is the main reason for the size increase, along with a few higher resolution graphics.
  • JarredWalton - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link

    Did a bit more digging. It turns out there's an 82.3MB WAV file (for the soundtrack audio), which is also available in OGG format as a 1.8MB file; there's another 21.4MB of OGG audio files for voice overs (journal entries and I'm not sure what else). The original GIF portraits use 1.08MB, and the uprezed PNG portraits are 17MB. Oddly, for some reason the journal entries and portraits also appear to be in BIN files that together use another 38.1MB. There are five grayscale desktop backgrounds included as well, as PNG files, that together use 63.6MB. Last but not least, there are four PDF files included, which appear to be scans of the original manuals and a hint book; these four files use 78MB.

    So if we eliminate the unnecessary stuff (manual, WAV file, backgrounds), the core "enhanced" game files look to be more like 100MB, give or take.
  • JNo - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link

    Is Bobby a man or a woman?
  • JarredWalton - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link

    He's a young boy.

    [Spoiler, though it's a small one....]

    Yes, Wasteland was so "edgy" that you could actually kill children in some areas. And unlike Fallout, no one ever removed the kids running around some towns. (Though I think Highpool is the only place with children in Wasteland.) You basically get attacked by Bobby's dog that has rabies, and have to kill it, at which point Bobby hates you and attacks. I suppose you can probably just run from him repeatedly, but other than making you feel bad there's no real penalty for killing him.
  • LordHaHa - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link

    There's one other spot at least actually. I just remembered playing the re-release (I'm a late backer) that there are the...
    (minor spolier)
    ...heavily armed babies at the Rail Nomads.

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