Wasteland was, is, and will forever be the best computer game of all time. Now without making myself sound like a complete dork/nerd/dweeb/whatever in 1988 (yeah, way back in the fucking 80′s) I bought a computer game with my own money and loved the dogshit out of it. This is actaually a quite significant gesture for me (buying the game that is). I was 13 fucking years old and I had no job, too young to drive, no girls, a miserable nobody in jr high. I was deeply into the “hacker underworld” already at this young age. This was a much different time for computers and the underground. What I mean is that the computers were clocked in single digit megahertz, my fucking IBM PS/2 50 had an EGA monitor (that’s 16 colors boys and girls), 256k RAM (not even 1 meg, my stupid laptop has over a gigabyte), a 4.5 mhz 286 processor (my laptop today is burning up the competition with 3.06 gigahertz), and a 20 megabyte hard drive (my digital camera has 25 times that much digital storage capacity). Compared to today’s standards that is almost an unimaginable joke. There was no internet back then, and 3.5″ floppy disks (yeah, those little 1.44 megabyte jobbies) were still so new that they were almost a rarity. I had a 2400 baud modem connecting my computer to the phone line and with that little gem I linked up with what at the time was about the coolest fucking thing in the world. Dial-up BBS systems. In an age before wireless connections and cable modems all we had were these crappy slow-ass modems that would let you dial up another computer directly through your house phoneline and connect with their system. I can remember a number of times I got into huge trouble for dialing up BBS’s in New York or Chicago and staying connected for hours downloading the latest 0-day pirated computer software. So in the midst of all this pre-pubescent rebellion I came across something that was actually found worthy of purchase with real money and not download credits. WASTELAND. The game is practially irrelevant today with games that boast live action sequences and high resolution 3-d graphics and completely interactive environments b ut back in the day it was way ahead of it’s time. Wasteland puts you directly into the world of post-nuclear southwest america with all the filth and desperation and imagination that let you actually start to revere the game on a higher level. The graphics are inventive and unique, the animations were smooth and exciting. The thing that really put Wasteland over the top, the thing that you NEVER see in games these days was the attention to detail. I can remember having the shit kicked out of me in Dive Phase of BUD/s for not remembering some stupid little trivia fact about closed circuit dive rigs, bear crawling with charged twin 80′s on my back in full dive gear and wetsuit over rocky ground until my hands and knees and feet were just a bloody mess “attention to detail, attention to detail, attention to detail!!” Well I’m here to fucking tell you that I know attention to detail when I fucking see it and Wasteland has it in spades. Just emerging from the earlier generations of text only computer games Wasteland actually contained more graphic AND text detail than anything before it. You can go anywhere and do anything you want, and YES… you can FUCK A HOOKER (and catch some STD’s from the bitch).

Here is just a quick example that I scraped off the internet of some truly kickass detail.

The following are just some of the messages that you get when you explore empty abandoned houses that serve no purpose in the game and in no way progress the plot.

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.

Look, I could sit here and rant about the game until my girlfriend never wants to talk to me again but the bottom line is that the game was way beyond cool, the game was revolutionary. 17 fucking years later and I’m still blathering on and on about some stupid piece of computer code, ones and zeros really, that takes up less space on my hard drive than one single picture from my digital camera. Anyway, along with this blog I am supplying everything I’ve got that is wasteland related here on the site.

—–

The following is an excerpt from The History of the Desert Rangers, The Early Years, by Karl Allard, 2087, Allard Press, Ranger Center Hardbound pp. 293, $20 gold. Tensions grew with the coming of 1998. The United States’ Citadel Starstation was slated to be fully operational by March, Soviet charges that the space station was merely a military launching platform alarmed a number of nonaligned nations. The right wing governments in the South and Central Americas, many of them set up by the U.S. during the Drug Wars (1987-1993), pledged their support to the U.S. The NATO nations, including the new African members also declared their alliance with the U.S. That move forced most of the remaining neutral powers to join the Soviet protest. In six short weeks, only Switzerland, Sweden, and Ireland continued to declare themselves neutral nations.

Two weeks before Citadel was due for full operation, the station transmitted a distress signal. Immediately after the message was sent, most of the satellites orbiting the planet were swept clean from the sky, leaving the great powers blind. In military panic, each sent 90 percent of their nuclear arsenals skyward. Although the destruction was tremendous, it was not complete. Pockets of civilization remained, some even oblivi- ous to the military exchange.

On the same day that the U.S. and Soviet Union were attempting to extinguish each other, a company of U.S. Army Engineers were in the southwestern deserts building transportation bridges over dry riverbeds. They worked deep in the inhospitable desert valleys, surrounded by a number of survivalist communities. Located directly south of their position on that day was a newly-constructed federal prison. In addition to housing the nation’s criminals condemned to death, the prison contained light industrial manufacturing facilities.

Shortly after the nuclear attack began, the Engineers, seeking shelter, took over the federal prison and expelled the prisoners into the desolate desert to complete their sentences. As the weeks passed, they invited the nearby survivalist communities to join them and to help them build a new society. Because of each communities’ suspicions towards one another, times were difficult at first. But as time nurtured trust, this settlement — which came to be known as Ranger Center — grew to be one of the strongest outposts. Ranger Center even proved powerful enough to repel the hands of rancorous criminals who repeatedly attached in attempts to reclaim what was once “rightfully theirs.”

The citizens of Ranger Center, after first believing that they were the only ones who survived the nuclear malestrom, soon realized that communities beyond the desert’s grip had also survived, Because they had such success in constructing a new community, they felt compelled to help other survivors rebuild and live in peace.

Toward this end, the Desert Rangers, in the great tradition of the Texas and Arizona Rangers a century before, were born.

Powered by WebRing.