Several weeks ago, Fallout creator Tim Cain went viral for claiming Interplay “lost” the entirety of Fallout‘s development archive, creating a major obstacle in the preservation of the game’s history. Following these reports, Interplay co-founder Rebecca Heineman has confirmed at least some of this archive remains, as she personally made it a “quest” to preserve Interplay’s games after the company lost the source code for Wasteland.
Speaking to VideoGamer, Heineman confirmed source code for both Fallout and Fallout 2 is safe, as is data for a range of other Interplay titles. That’s despite the company reportedly telling employees that all personal copies of files they owned had to be destroyed, as Interplay itself would manage the archive.
Per Heineman, she saw first-hand how Interplay treated its titles, and so decided to take matters into her own hands in the 1990s.
“Wasteland was ported to PC by someone else, so I asked for the source and was given a blank stare,” Heineman explained of her inspiration. “I went to the COO’s office and he gave me a cardboard box that looked like it was run over by a truck and it had some of the source on floppies. I ended up contacting friends at Electronic Arts to get a copy of the source we sent them when Wasteland shipped.”
Read: Tim Cain says Interplay “lost” Fallout development archives
As she told VideoGamer, the incident inspired her to “snapshot” everything and archive it on CD-ROMs. By the time she left Interplay in 1995, she had copies of “every game” the studio did, with “no exceptions.” Fallout and Fallout 2 were snapshotted as part of this process, so the games have been preserved.
There is one additional complication, however. Bethesda Game Studios owns the rights to Fallout, and therefore the preserved source code is now under its jurisdiction.
“Fallout would require permission from Bethesda,” Heineman explained. While she was previously able to release code for her 3DO port of DOOM, this was under special circumstances, and with the permission of id Software. Bethesda may still allow the release of the Fallout source code, but Heineman simply hasn’t “gotten around to asking them.”
“I need expressed permission to release, despite the source code being pretty much obsolete,” Heineman explained. In future, we may still see the source code released, with permission, but for now, we’ll have to wait to see what eventuates. At the very least, it’s good to know Fallout and Fallout 2 remain in good hands, and that Heineman is aware of the value of the data preserved.
As Heineman notes, other artefacts from the franchise’s development – like Tim Cain’s notes and early iterations – remain “lost” as previously described, but it’s certainly a good thing that one of the most important slices of its history, the actual source code, remains.
