In Brief:

• The source code for Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 has been discovered and preserved
• The data was previously thought to be lost after creator Tim Cain was forced to destroy his materials
• Interplay co-founder Rebecca Heineman aims to gain permission from Bethesda to release the code publicly

The source code for post-apocalyptic RPGs Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, previously thought to be lost, have been rediscovered thanks to one of the co-founders of the franchise’s original developer, Interplay.

Fallout creator Tim Cain sparked lamentation in late April following a video regarding game preservation. In it, he recounted a story about being forced to destroy his Fallout assets upon leaving Interplay, per company policy. This included design documents, prototypes, and source code. 

Years later, Interplay contacted him to ask if he had retained any assets from the games, since the company itself had lost them.

After Cain’s video drew some attention, Interplay co-founder and designer Rebecca Heineman came out of the woodwork to reveal that she had used her position at the company to retain the source code for not only Fallout 1 and 2, but several other Interplay games as well, following work on a 10 year anthology collection.

Speaking to VideoGamer, Heineman said: “When I left Interplay in 1995, I had copies of every game we did. No exceptions. When I did MacPlay [a company founded to bring Interplay games to Mac], which existed beyond my tenure at Interplay, every game we ported, I snapshotted. It included Fallout 1 and 2.”

Heineman corroborated Cain’s story, explaining that “Interplay had issues with people leaving the firm, and if you quit, they got… testy,” and that the company “had a reputation of threatening ex-employees with litigation if they were ‘poached’, and if they had assets taken home.”

“I was a founder, so when I left, I kept EVERYTHING.”

Heineman says she hopes to release the source code to Fallout 1 and 2, but is waiting to gain permission from the franchise’s current rights holder, Bethesda.

The discovery is good news for game preservation, though Cain’s design documents and production materials, which are equally vital in preserving the story of gamemaking, are still a tragic loss.