ABSTRACT
Heat and decay, Mutations and disfigurements, Death and destruction. This is what welcomes players to the worlds of Wasteland and Fallout. These popular American post-apocalyptic roleplaying games (RPGs) present an Earth nearly destroyed from nuclear catastrophes. Wasteland and Fallout are pioneering and critically acclaimed examples of post-apocalyptic RPGs. The original PC-based Wasteland has been called “the godfather” of post-apocalyptic RPGs Produced by Brian Fargo, Wasteland is set in a futuristic American Southwest following a meteoric impact event that unintentionally triggered a global nuclear war. Post-apocalyptic narratives in RPGs like Wasteland and Fallout are often products of the ebb and flow of American Cold War fears of global nuclear war. Michael Falero suggests American post-apocalyptic digital games are influenced by the “popular focus on nuclear warfare, MAD, and fallout shelters [that] overlapped with the advent of video game technology” in the 1970s and 1980s.
