Thank you for your insightful thoughts. Yeah, I wondered if the miniaturization scene had resonated with anyone else. I had also saw Tron, but this was the first time that I had the sense of miniature in a video game. The atmosphere is, as you point out, wonderful. It’s too bad that the sense of wonderment is hard-won, since we don’t get to spend much time dwelling in the underground-civilization moment… it’s almost an afterthought when it is finally revealed to the player. Then again, when I go back to Planetfall, it’s great knowing that I will *eventually* find out that truth again…

Thanks so much for your encouragement. I have considered many many times to write something up on Fallout 3, but I always find myself with little to say. I suspect that I don’t quite have enough distance on the game yet to really appreciate its values. If anything, I’d like to write about my experience with F3 after being so thoroughly grounded in Fallout 1 and 2. Perhaps this is a good push to get me started on that article…

Take care,
- Chris

But the miniaturization bit wasn’t so memorable either, perhaps because Tron already made me used to that kind of world-in-a-grain-of-sand. The atmosphere of the world – climbing up to the cliff, finding the ruins, exploring them and discovering the emptiness, then slowly the horrible awful secret behind it that is already eating away at your own self – that was special. I think the text-only nature of the game allowed it to be even more powerful in creating this atmosphere.

Thus actually what bothered me most was the end of the game when it turned out the planet’s population had mostly survived; I felt alone during the whole game, and didn’t like the sudden realization that deep beneath my feet, an entire civilization was just waiting to wake up.

Unrelated:
I just ran across your blog now, Chris, and I appreciate its existence! The themes you write about aren’t often discussed, and they speak strongly to my own experience of games. I know you mostly think back to older games, but I was surprised to not find much about Fallout 3 in your blog. I found its atmosphere wonderful, too. The ruins of civilization’s infrastructure and the creepily cheerful 50′s music. I’d be curious to hear more of your thoughts about it.

I have DOS Box installed correctly as well as the game. However, the game hangs up at the “dialing” stage and finaly gives error message “wrong phone number, (or somethin like that)”. I did have the game working fine for several weeks, but had to install a new modum/router. I reinstalled the game using the Inn Revival Project installer, but no luck. Please let me know if game server is up.

On another note: I played back in 94 and have really enjoyed the revival. Anyone remember a player called “Res Ispa” (Me) Then I was playing from Park City UT.

Hapy gaming to all

Just don’t forget to be aggressive when defending it. It’s a rare opportunity to enjoy yourself against certain academic mediocrities in front of an audience.