Source code for the first Fallout and its sequel, long thought lost, has actually been safely preserved for decades, a cofounder of Interplay has revealed.
Created by Tim Cain and released by Interplay in 1997 for PC and Mac, Fallout was followed by a sequel in 1998. A third game, codenamed Van Buren, was ultimately cancelled in 2003.
Interplay sold the Fallout IP to Bethesda in 2007 to avoid bankruptcy, with many of Van Buren’s concepts later used in 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas.
In a video uploaded to his YouTube channel on April 24, Cain stated his belief that the source code for Fallout, along with countless accompanying assets, had been destroyed long ago.
“When I left Fallout, I was told ‘you have to destroy everything you have,’ and I did,” he said, adding, “My entire archive, early design notes, code, code for different versions, prototypes, gone. They were going to keep it. They lost it.”
Cain revealed that Interplay, having lost the source code, had contacted him years after he departed the company in search of it.
“The amount of stuff that’s been lost about Fallout and its early development saddens me,” Cain concluded, adding, “I had that and was ordered to destroy it.”
Bethesda acquired the Fallout IP from Interplay in 2007.
Fallout 1 & 2 source code not lost
On May 2, Rebecca Heineman, one of Interplay’s founders, revealed to VideoGamer that she maintains copies of every title released by Interplay before her departure in 1995, which includes the first two Fallout games.
Similar to Cain, Heineman had concerns over a lack of care for game preservation, and so made it her “quest” to ensure nothing was lost.
“I made it a quest to snapshot everything and archive it on CD-ROMs,” she told the site. “When I left Interplay in 1995, I had copies of every game we did. No exceptions. When I did MacPlay, which existed beyond my tenure at Interplay, every game we ported, I snapshotted. It included Fallout 1 and 2.”
Explaining why she wasn’t subject to the same request to destroy game assets as Cain, Heineman said,
“Interplay had issues with people leaving the firm, and if you quit, they got… testy. I was a founder, so when I left, I kept EVERYTHING. Now, on Fallout, I did the Mac port for my company, MacPlay. So I have everything, including the source code to Fallout 1 and 2. I don’t have Tim’s notes or other work in progress files. But the source code is not lost.”
Could Heineman’s revelation lead to both games’ source code being released online or, better yet, remastered in the same vein as Oblivion? Any such decision would ultimately be Bethesda’s to make; Heineman, busy with other projects, stated that she simply “hadn’t gotten around to asking” the studio for permission yet, so never say never.
Fallout 4, released in 2015, remains the newest mainline series entry and was adapted for TV in 2024 for Amazon Prime Video.
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