Duck and Cover

Since DU invited other people to write about their first Fallout experiences, I've decided to copy Megatron and do just that. Why, you ask? Because I'm bored.

I was fourteen the first time I first saw Fallout; I'm currently twenty-two, so some things are hazy. Aside from Carmeggedon 2 and Doom, Fallout is the only game I still have from back then; it is, however, the only one of those I still play frequently.

I was at a mall in October 1997 - I forget why - and my father and I were standing inside the EB Games store. Money was tight back then, so my parents never bought me random stuff, and I can't say I really cared.

My father picked up the Fallout box with it's $30 price sticker, read the back of it. He then handed the box to me and asked me what I thought.

I liked the idea of a post-apocalyptic America, but the idea of an RPG was off-putting. This was at a time in my life when I didn't know there was such a thing as a pen-and-paper RPG, and my previous experiences with CRPGs were an indie hack-n-slash called "Moraff's World" and Wizardry VII.

I handed the box back to my father and said that it looked kinda crappy. He was insistent on getting it for me despite my objections; I told him if he was going to waste money, to do it on Quake. He showed the same insistence he had shown when he made me watch a rented copy of Heavy Metal, and when he recommended I take judo lessons. Those were both experiences that shaped my life: as it turned out, Fallout was no different.

When we got home, I installed Fallout and fired it up. I watched the introduction, dumbfounded by its visuals and the fact that the U.S. had invaded Canada. The Inkspots hooked me with "Maybe," and Ron Pearlman reeled me in with "War, war never changes."

After creating a character I'm sure was terrible, I was greeted with the face of the Overseer telling me the Vault was in deep kimche and that I needed to get a water chip. Oh, and by the way, I only had 180 days to do it in.

Then I was outside Vault 13, completely baffled by the interface. After looting the corpse in the torn vault jumpsuit, I decided that I would talk to a rat; I'd played enough Sierra adventures to know that's what the mouth icon meant.

Apparently I wasn't much of a conversationalist, as the rat and two of his buddies killed me.

I restarted the game, now pissed off at and respectful of the rats. I clicked the vault door control about eleventy billion times in a desperate bid to get back inside, but no dice.

Half a dozen restarts later, I managed my way out of the cave and into sunlight.


I don't remember much of the game after that. I know that, using my terrific observation skills, I never revealed enough of the story to realize the Master existed. I busted into the cathedral - gathering from the dialogue I had seen that they were evil and needed to die - fought my way past Nightkin and other assorted douchebags, and made it to the basement. There I found a nuclear bomb and set it to blow, gleefully unaware of what significance it had to anything. If memory serves me correctly, I did this before I recovered the water chip.

I also avoided Necropolis because I didn't like the place. I turned over every rock in every town looking for that damn water chip, never thinking that it would be in there. After traveling back to Vault 13 to win the game, I was told I needed to leave again and look for mutants. Kinda bummed out about not being triumphant, but happy the game wasn't over yet, I headed back out into the wastes, set the military base to blow up, and went back to Vault 13.

The most satisfying part of the game was when my character whipped out his 14mm and blew a hole into the Overseer's chest.

Well, that's the abridged story of my first Fallout game. I've played it through over thirty times since then, and everytime I do I notice something new.

Cool. One of us will post it sometime soon (i cast: summon DarkUnderlord!)

I don't see why this should be posted; it wasn't particurlarly well written.

Maybe make a database of the okay ones like this and only post the uber-elite ones?

*sniff* That was so touching.

Alright, my story goes here...

It began on 24th December 1999, when then 11-year-old Kashluk received a slim present that had his name written on it. Eagerly, expecting to get one of these new and fancy CD-ROM computer games, he opened the present and saw the cover: "Fallout 2 - a post nuclear role playing game". His thoughts were a mix of surprise and slight disappointment, since he had never heard of such "fallouts" or "role playing games" before. Kashluk turned to his mother and asked where she or daddyo had bought it from, but she told him that it was a gift from his uncle. Yes, Kashluk's uncle, a big businessman in Moscow at that time, had been randomly picking some pirate CDs as Christmas gifts from the Red Square stall-holders. Taking a quick look around and inside this new "fallout"-CD, Kashluk noticed that the cover was blank on the other side and the back was full of text written in Russian. All he could make out of the words were the requirements: "Pentium 133, 16 MbRAM, Windows 95". Kashluk sighed and put this strange CD on the same pile with the other gifts he had got that dark, yet important, Christmas eve.

It was early morning on 25th December 1999. Kashluk was booting up his PC (the one he has to share with his younger siblings) and trying to get that strange "fallout" CD out of the cover. He sets it in the CD tray and is in awe of the wonderful installation screen: this muscular guy and a dog-wolf running away from heavily armed men and a helicopter. There was going to be chopper exploding fun! Kashluk chose the normal installation, since his hard disk was filled with other games, such as Rise Of The Triads and Doom 2, which he didn't want to erase. Finally the installation is ready and Kashluk double-clicks the icon on the desktop. The intro movies flashed by his eyes and little did he know, that those images would burn into the back of his skull and stay there for years to come. With his superior 11-year-old's skills in the English language he managed to start a new game and picked a character. He picked Narg, since he was the best fighter and the others must've been just useless wussies - what would be the use of "charisma" or "science" when you were going to have chopper blowing fun! He watched the beginning movie and was too excited to stay on the chair - there was some sparkling in the air (what a rhyme).

He entered the game, disappointed to see that his character was topless (eww, man tits) and that the character was unarmed. How are you supposed to blow up helicopters like that, huh? Well he managed to find out that by pressing F1 he could see all the most important commands used in the game. So Kashluk pressed "I", finding his inventory. It took him a while (propably 15 minutes) to figure out how to use weapons, but eventually he managed to make his character use a spear. Then he went to the guy guarding this path of some sort and tried to talk to him. He didn't let Kashluk pass, so he decided to kill that stupid man, but got himself killed instead. How very much disappointing. He was bounced back to the main menu and decided to click "Exit". What a boring game. He put the CD back in the cover and threw the whole thing to the back of his closet and uninstalled that worthless piece of game as fast as he could.

10 months later, October-ish 2000. Now 12-year-old Kashluk was browsing through his games, looking for something refreshing to play, since everything he had installed on his computer had been chewn through at least three times in a row and boredom was about to take over. Suddenly he noticed a dust-covered CD at the back of his closet. He dusted it off and saw the label: "Fallout 2". There was something familiar in that name, something nasty, but he decided to try it anyway. He installed it, started the game and remembered: "This piece of shit, oh well, I might as well give it a try". And so he progressed, emptying the Temple of Trials and finding himself outside, open to a whole world of blood and gore-obscura. Love... Love was in the air.



That was the story of how I and Fallout got together. From this point on we had several funny adventures, playing the game with friends who were staying for a night, killing off mobs and children and doing all kinds of strange things that were possible within the Fallout universe (prostitutes and 12 year olds, you do the math). Although my bad English and my relatively bad skills at maneuvering my progress were slowing me down, it felt like the best game in the world, ever. After completing it for a couple of times I went on to the web (56k modems at that time) to look for walkthroughs and cheats and found Duck and Cover in all it's glory. This was the time when my love-hate-relationship with this website and community began. A 12 years old, frustrated and fucking horny Finnish boy meets a bunch of middle-aged American Fallout-fans, again, you do the math.

At one point, I came obsessed with obtaining Fallout 1, the one and only original post-apocalypse role playing game, but that's completely another story to tell, which I'll save for later, alright? But anyways, this was my story. I hope it provided at least some amount of enlightment on my situation and what has made me the way I am today. Seriously, DAC must've been the single-most important influence besides "real people" (meaning people I met in real life) - no music, no movie, no nothing has done so much in effort to shape my personality. For the better or the worse, well that's up to you to judge.

Good night, Seattle! I love you!

*beep* [/rant] *bee-pop*

Twas the 'eve of christmas, 2000. Yet another uneventful year, and another gift receiving moment. When asked by my older brother what I wanted, I didn't know. I'd heard good things from a gaming mag about a game called "Fallout" which I had spotted at Electronic Boutique's discount bin, and figured "what the hell". So, Christmas morn arrived and I started on my first Fallout adventure, with the only previous RPG experiances being FF7 and Dungeon Master.

I watched the intro. It was cool. I laughed at the guy getting shot in the head, and I replyed the intro many times to simply watch that over...and over...and over...and over again. By the time I created my first character, I was rearing to go. My dude appeared out the front of the huge door. pressed "i" to see my inventory, as I actually bothered to read the manual during installation, and put the gun in one slot, and a stimpack in the other. I then see a rat, with the mouth icon. I wonder up to it, and as soon as I'm next to it, combat opens up. I cryed as my guy with no small gun skills (as we all know that big is better) missed each and everytime and slowly got himself killed.

Take 2. I give my guy some semblence of small guns 'skill', and drop the rats like a drunken walleby. I eventually find the sunlight, and eventually figure out that the red overlay ment exit. So, off I went into the wasteland. I got one sector accross to vault 15, before I was assailed by 6 mantids feeding on some killed trader. Thinking that the mantids are no better then the rats, I proceed to take them on. Thus, I meet my second lesson of the game. If you're dieing. Run.

On my 3rd adventure I discovered the wonders of the save button, and made it to shady sands. Where I got into a gun fight with Ian and died again...

Eventually, I got a decent fighting character rolling. I got to Shady Sands. Then exclaimed "MACGYVER!" when I reached Junktown. From there, it's just a blur, although I do remember moments like killing Ian to get my loot off him to get my hands on combat armour, a minigun, and a combat shotgun.

6 Days after christmas I'd finished it. I wanted more. I went down to the same shop I'd found Fallout from, and asked if they had a Fallout 2, not even knowing if there was any such animal. The clerk returned with a box, and I got it. My computer at the time sucked. Sucked hard enough that loading a save game in Fallout 2 took 10minutes. After almost finishing it, I gave up and waited for the eventful moment of a computer upgrade....

I picked up a used copy of Fallout at a comp store back in '97 not having heard much about it. I had played a few CRPGs back in the day, and was at first skeptical that you could pull one off without resorting to undead skellies and elves and such.

After stumbling through the intro rat fest, I made several attempts at improved character creation and then played for countless hours sniping raiders in the face and generally saving the day. Since then I've played through it more times than I'll admit.. Fallout 2 especially.

I was just really impressed with the whole game as a package - the feel and style of the universe it was set in.

I've never heard on Fallout until 2000. I just happen to bump into a shop with more than 10 copy of the original copies on it, it was priced £3. So I picked it up..... hum.... cheap XD. Than got Fallout 2 original for £7 few month later. The sad thing is I lend them out and never came back T_T...... But the good thing is I still have the two manual and box come with it. Than FT came out I bough it for £30 and it cam with the whitelable Fallout package with both 1 and 2. The sad thing is I lend them out again and both with FT never got back to me T_T............... so I've sick on lending out original copies of Fallout games, I've downloaded both games and copied it for lending out this year. I'm planing to buy the fallout collect with Fallout 1, 2 and FT for £20.

I missed the two headed cow CD case for the first game T_T.....

FALLOUT IS MY ANTI-DRUG

Fallout seems to be kind of like 9/11 or (so I'm told) the Kennedy Assassination, because I remember all of the events which were transpiring in my life when "it happened" - whereas I can't remember a thing about my experiences with other games (well, except for Half-Life). I suppose that proves Fallout as something "worthy", though of what I don't know. It's definately one of the coolest things (geeky or otherwise) that I've stumbled across in my life.

I first played Fallout at a friend's house sometime in early 2001, when I was 13. My friend was enthusiastic about how good Fallout was, but he was the type who easily became enthusiastic about most things and showered endless praise on them, so I didn't really pay much attention to his advice. Nonetheless, I was captivated by the opening sequence and Ron Perlman's introduction. I had played a bit of tabletop D&D before playing Fallout, but I had never played a CRPG before, and so I found the idea of a game that took character development so seriously an interesting one. When I played it for the first time at my friend's house, I got out of the caves after fumbling with the interface, traveled northwest, encountered a radscorpion, and was promptly killed. After that I begged my friend to give me his copy of Fallout, and after a couple of months, he caved. He gave it to me on the last day of junior high, as I recall, and I rushed home to play it. I played through to The Hub in one day (took me about 8 hours), and I was totally wrapped up in the game: everything about it just added up to create a wholly orgasmic experience. I got through the entire game in the first week or so of summer vacation. I don't remember much of what happened other than that I had a lot of trouble getting past the Cathedral and the Military Base, and that all of the flesh on the walls in the Cathedral basement, in addition to the Master, freaked me out.

Soon after I went on the internet and joined the Vault13 community because I wanted to learn more about everything to do with Fallout. I was interested in the backstory and all the subquests and game stuff that I had missed the first time around. I can't remember much of the community itself (it's all a hazy blur). I lurked on the boards and I occasionally posted under some other name which I don't remember.

I got Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics for my birthday in October 2001. I played through all of Tactics and was very disappointed with it for the usual reasons. It was also quite painful to play through it on TB when running it on a 300 MHz computer. I never touched it again. As for Fallout 2, I loved it. It was probably more fun than Fallout 1, if somewhat half-baked and less interesting. I spent something like 4 months playing through the game the first time, so needless to say it was an awesome experience. Over the years, I've replayed the first two Fallouts several times, but I haven't replayed either since 2003 (when I pretty much went off of computer games in general), and every time I did replay either game I had a similar orgasmic wasteland experience.

Around this time I also got interested in playing Fallout as a tabletop game, and I found Fallout PNP off of Iamapsycho. Some time later I played it with my gaming group, and I wrote a campaign for it which went rather well. I even tried to write my own Fallout roleplaying game over the course of several years (2002 to mid-2004), though it never really materialized because I am a very lazy person (although I did manage to write over 200 pages worth of content for it).

I joined the DAC community in 2002 but ignored for about a year. When I started posting on DAC, however, I found that I totally jibed with it. The forums and #fallout have collectively filled my life's previously deficient bizarro quota. No doubt the community has had some influence on me, because I'm all the more of a cynical asshole since I started reading it. I have to say that I'm in love with most of the people here in one way or another, but they're all so very interesting (at least, most are), and I obviously am in tune with the cynical attitude that prevails here. DAC is a guilty pleasure for me (one of the many). I'm addicted. The fact that I waste so much time on this forum is a well-guarded secret. Even though I don't really play games anymore, and to be honest I could hardly care less about what's happening with Fallout these days, I still love this place.

Well, that's my long-winded, semi-autobiographical, nerdy litany in all its glory. Hope you liked it. If you didn't, eat shit and die.

Yeah, good ol' Vault-13.net. That place was so full of... of... Now that you mentioned it, I can't really remember anything about it either. The memories concerning that place are kinda blurred, but it effected me enough that I got addicted on the look of that site - I'm using v13-skin at the very moment. Neon green is my heroine.

Oh. I dig the grey-orange theme, for some reason. In fact, I like it so much that I set it for the theme on my desktop. How zany.

...Doesn't anybody else have any zany Fallout memories? I was actually kind of looking forward to reading some D:

Don't tell mother.

Your mother?

My Fists Your Face!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My stroy with Fallout is too long to relate ;]
ENGLISH MOTHERFUCKER DO I SPEAK IT ????

Kurt wrote:My stroy with Fallout is too long to relate ;]
ENGLISH MOTHERFUCKER DO I SPEAK IT ????

hey hey hey if your going to use caplocks please spell story right

Kern, unless you are behaving in a deliberate, pre-meditated manner (a possibility which I dare not dismiss, yet), you mutilate, rather than write or speak.

G'way Kern.

First experience I've ever had with fallout, was in a danish magazine of a sorts, which held the walkthrough for Fallout.

At first I disregarded it, as you do with most uninteresting looking things in a magazine, but when I later that year had brought it with me on a trip to Croatia, I had read everything else through, and all that remained was the walkthrough... so I began reading it to the end, and was enthralled about the idea, even though I had only the vaguest clue of what the game was like.

When I returned, I had almost forgotten it, when I saw the cover for "Fallout 2", on a table, at my friends home. I thought to myself if there was a sequal, then it's probably worth playing.

He had statistics written down for weapons and drugs and so, and it seemed pretty cool at the time. (Was just introduced to AD&D at the time, so everything paper-wise held interest).

I saw his character aboard the ship in Fallout 2, where he'd just purchased a Super Power Fist Glove Thingy, which seemed awesome, with it's electrical wiring, green light and spikes all over. I asked if I could borrow it, but he said: "Not until you've finished this.", and handed me "Fallout: A post nuclear roleplaying game"

"Enjoy it, as much as you can," he said, "and when you come begging for more, I'll lend you Fallout 2."

I never did get to borrow it from him. I bought it myself the day after I finished Fallout.

To set time in perspective, The Cardigans had just released a song I liked... Erase/Rewind, in 1999. My sister had bought me a CD with that song on it, and she brought it over just as I was running around Necropolis, flaming glowing ones with overjoyus glee.
My sister of course thought I was sick and weird taking joy in something as "horrible" like that.

They never understood...

I'd just like to fill in for the role of thread jerk and point out that these have all been exceedingly long and very few ppl are actually reading them.

Carry on.

I'd just like to fill in for the role of thread jerk

We have maybe a hunred of those on the forum already... keep it to the wasteland, away from our finest memories.

Fair enough.