Interplay Productions, Wasteland, Electronic Arts (1988).
Entry by Ryan Maclennan
In 1998, following an international diplomatic dispute, both the United States and the Soviet Union launched ninety percent of their nuclear arsenals, realizing the Cold War potential for mutually assured destruction. Cities were leveled, farmland was poisoned, and populations were decimated. Yet despite the massive attacks, some life survived. The year is now 2087 and you are a member of an elite squadron of rangers—one of the last groups of survivors. Your faction is tasked with preventing a new cyborg menace from destroying the last vestiges of humanity.
Thus begins the acclaimed 1988 computer game Wasteland. The game immerses the player in the midst of post-nuclear Nevada, allowing them to explore the long-term societal and physical implications of an all out nuclear war. Computer games in the 1980s were a relatively new medium. The technology at the time was limited and the gameplay of Wasteland feels more like a board game than a contemporary video game. If you purchase the game, it comes with a 30-page booklet of paragraphs that are referenced throughout gameplay, adding depth to the story, making it more like an interactive book than a videogame. Still, Wasteland is an innovative and—at the time—unique opportunity to engage with the post-nuclear world, to partake in a fascinating, but unthinkable, setting. It allowed individuals to engage with hypothetical realities in firsthand interactive ways by moving their 2D sprite through the apocalyptic landscape. Importantly, Wasteland is not a game about nuclear war—it is set 90 years after any nuclear bombs are used—but is rather about survival and the long-term societal and biological implications of nuclear fallout.