Just got to blurt out, so many scary people with such fierce Fallout dogma. Takes a set of brass balls just to post around here. At least I'm up to 2 now, and it's only taken me a year. As it is, Gamespot will be posting a preview of FO3 before I set foot on the board for it. I only post there in my nightmares.
Anyhow, I was bored one night long ago and found an archive of sorts. A website who's main purpose was to provide game demos. Most of them were for titles that had been long released, or maybe even abandonware. I read the description for a demo of something called Fallout, and was intruiged. So, I downloaded it.
I became obsessed. If I had a nickel for every time I must've played that demo, and explored that little map from one corner to the other, I could start my own company and fund the completion of VanBuren myself. (By the way, a happy pie to anyone who could point me to a working link to download that demo today.)
I had nothing but the demo for a few months. Especially compared to now, I was a fledging as a gamer (There was a time before when I wasn't one. If you think hard, you might remember a similar period in your own life). I think I was also starting high school or thereabouts (in college now), so driving 45 minutes to the nearest Electronics Boutique and hunting for it wasn't much of an option.
God bless the good people at Amazon.com. They were still newish in those days, and internet shopping was still being talked about like it was a recent development in the mainstream, if I remember right. What a nice day it was when my lovely FO/FO2 back to back jewel case set was delivered.
I kept the demo and played it for months, so of course I'm still getting loads of quality play time out of the real deals. I still don't think I have seen every possible thread there is to see, and I keep playing them on rotation. Playing through Tactics now (Tough Guy is the bane of my existence). Sure it's got its issues, both in general and in terms of fitting in with Fallout canon, but I still think it's worthy to be in the lineup, and have tons of fun with it. That's probably because Interplay was pretty much in its death throes by the time I learned anything more about them besides that they were the logo that popped up when I started another round of Fallout, so I missed out on the terrible, teeth-gnashing bitterness that so many have left from the episode between the release of FO2 and now.
Hell, it was a while before I found the forums and realized there was a legion of fans and that it wasn't just me. Thank goodness there is, cause misery loves company, and what tale is more woeful than a Fallout fanchild's?