Development
Wasteland was first distributed for the Apple II and ported to the Commodore 64 and PC DOS platforms in 1988 - it is sometimes (and erroneously) listed as being published in 1987, because that year appears on the title screen of the Apple version. While all versions were nearly identical in terms of gameplay, the EGA PC port had upgraded graphics (there was also a CGA version), although the C64 boasted the best sound. The PC version differed by having an additional skill called "Combat Shooting" which could be bought only when a character was first created.
Wasteland was rereleased as part of Interplay's 10 Year Anthology: Classic Collection in 1995, and also included in the 1998 Ultimate RPG Archives through Interplay's DragonPlay label. These later bundled releases were missing the original setup program, which allowed the game's maps to be reset, while retaining the player's original team of Rangers. Jeremy Reaban wrote an unofficial (and unsupported) program that emulated this functionality.
One of the other features of this game was the inclusion of a printed collection of paragraphs which the game would instruct the player to read at the appropriate times. These paragraphs described encounters and conversations, contained clues, and added to the overall texture of the game. Because programming space was at a premium, it saved on resources to have most of the game's story printed out in a separate manual rather than store it within the game's code itself. The paragraph books also served as a rudimentary form of copy protection, as someone playing a copied version of the game would miss out on much of the story as well as clues necessary to progress. Additionally, the paragraphs included a completely unrelated story line about a mission to Mars intended to mislead those who read the paragraphs when not instructed to, and a false set of passwords that would trip up cheaters with results that ranged from character sex changes to detonating a bomb.
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