When Will The Original ‘Fallout’ Come To Consoles?

Fallout 4 arrives in about a month, ready to suck up the time and attention of gamers for weeks, months, possibly even years. But while the next entry in the franchise is ready to go, it does raise the important question of when we’ll get a crack at the franchise’s past. It’s time for the original Fallout to come to consoles.

Younger gamers only know Bethesda’s revamp of the series. But before Fallout was a beloved mix of guns and RPG elements, it was an beloved isometric RPG with a quirky sense of humor and an open world. What stood out about Fallout at the time, and what holds true even now, is how impeccably the game plays and how easily it handles the loops players throw at it, something the newer versions of the game pays tribute to.

At the time, importing Fallout to consoles made no sense; there was nothing in homes, short of possibly the 3DO, that could handle the game. And there was the matter of developer attitudes: Look no further than Interplay’s final, and disastrous, game in the series Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. It was developed for consoles and, well, see for yourself what Interplay thought console players wanted:

Bethesda revived the series with Fallout 3, of course, but with substantially different gameplay, and that’s really how the series is known these days. Bethesda seems happy to leave the franchise on PC and on whatever Android devices can be hacked to play the original games, and that’s a shame.

For one thing, it’s clear the old attitudes towards console gamers and PC gamers don’t apply; an isometric RPG may not move three million units, but they definitely have homes on consoles these days. Fallout‘s spiritual ancestor, Wasteland, just saw its sequel arrive on PS4. For another, while it’s easy to play Fallout if you’ve got, well, any sort of functioning PC, really, not everybody enjoys playing on a PC.

Besides, it’s important new gamers have access to the games of the past, both because they’re fun and because it offers background to the games of the present. Much of Fallout 4‘s tone and style comes directly from Fallout, and it’d be great to have the game and its ancestor back to back.

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