Original Fallout footage lost forever. Tim Cain didn't get along with Interplay
The Fallout creator destroyed its own game archive, as Interplay was to store the data. However, the company failed to do so, and much of the original material was irretrievably lost.
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Proper archiving of games is an extremely important issue. Many titles have played a significant role in shaping the history and laying the groundwork for the current state of the industry. Their total loss would therefore be a very painful blow. Tim Cain, the developer of the first Fallout, knows this all too well. He was asked to destroy his own game archives when he left the Interplay studio.
There's a lot of organizations out there that demand to be the archive keeper, and then they do a terrible job at it. They lose the assets they were in charge of keeping. This has happened multiple times in my career. When I left the Fallout team, I was told, 'you have to destroy everything you have,' and I did. My entire archive. Early design notes, code for different versions, prototypes, all the GURPS code – gone.
Cain reported that Interplay was supposed to handle the archiving of all content, but as it turned out, the publisher didn't quite succeed. A few years after the developer left, the company ed him and said, "oops, we lost it." At first, Cain thought it was some kind of trap, like: "We will sue you if you say you have them," but it turned out to be true.
In the end, it was possible to recover the source code of Fallout in the retail version, but many elements used to create the game were lost forever. This reminds us once again how important it is to archive both older and modern games.
So many other games that came out in the '70s, and '80s and '90s – the code is gone. The art assets are gone. Sure, you can try to crack open the databases and pull out those things, but you're only getting the final stuff. You're not getting the original source code or art. I think it's even happening for the '00s and the '10s and probably now in the '20s. Stuff is being lost.
Fortunately, many developers are aware of this. Just a few days ago, a few Japanese companies announced that they want to encourage preserving and sharing game production materials for future generations. A similar vision was also behind the creation of the GOG Preservation Program, which adapts old games to new hardware to ensure they are always available for players.
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