Fallout is considered to be the spiritual successor to the 1988 role-playing video game Wasteland. It was initially intended to use Steve Jackson Games' system GURPS, but Interplay eventually developed their own system called 'SPECIAL' for the game. Fallout was conceptualized as a game where the player could do whatever they wanted. The game was treated as low-budget by Interplay and was outsourced to the role-playing game division of Interplay, though it would cost $3 million.

Tim Cain is the creator of Fallout, working on it as early as 1994. The protagonist of Fallout is an inhabitant of a Vault, part of a network of long-term nuclear shelters, who is forced to venture out into the wastes to find a replacement part to fix their Vault's failing water supply system and save their fellow Vault dwellers. The game has a post-apocalyptic and chiefly retro-futuristic setting, taking place in the mid-22nd century decades after a global nuclear war. Fallout is a 1997 role-playing game developed and published by Interplay Productions.

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