What's The Real Release Date For Fallout 1?

[TheKingofVault14]

Back in 2020 during the 23rd anniversary of the Fallout series, I did what I normally would do which is celebrating it on September 30th. Business as usual, however a few weeks later I saw certain people celebrating and saying that October 10th is the ACTUAL day FO1 was released on. I was confused at first and simply brushed it off, but then in the following months I decided to look into it and what do you know. Somebody on the Wikipedia found two interesting pages that debunk the supposed September 30th release date, both sources seem credible, but don't actually 100% confirm the authenticity of said release date. Overall, here are the sources:

A PC Gamer article announcing newly released games around early October:

And most importantly...

THE FALLOUT 1 DEVELOPMENT LOGS:

This update right here shows that a glitch was found on Sept 30th and needed to be fixed ASAP, making it impossible for FO1 to be released then.

And these updates show that the game was being shipped and going on shelves between October 6th and October 10th.

Here's a link to the original page for those of you who want to see the whole thing for themselves!
https://web.archive.org/web/20000817224417/http://www.interplay.com/fallout/log.html

So what are your thoughts? When was FO1 actually released? And for any OG fans from back in the day who are still around, do you know anything about this and what's the correct date?

Also, the reason why I'm making this post it's because since the 25th anniversary is coming up, and ever since I was made aware of such a possible misconception. For me as a Fallout fan, I really want to correct a wrong if there even is any, it seems that a lot of us have possibly been celebrating FO1 and the ENTIRE series on the wrong day this whole time. And I want to fix this to the best of my ability, heck if Bethesda won't do it(and yes they STILL believe that it was released on September 30th) we the fans must step up and figure this out. WHOSE WITH ME!?

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

Hmm, this is kind of weird. I never knew there was a discrepancy involving the official release date. I generally trust Wikipedia on these matters (even though I probably shouldn’t), and their article says Fallout was released on October 10th, 1997. But apparently, to commemorate the supposed 20th anniversary, Steam made the game available for free on September 30th, 2017.

 

[Alphons]

 

[TheKingofVault14]

Hmm, this is kind of weird. I never knew there was a discrepancy involving the official release date. I generally trust Wikipedia on these matters (even though I probably shouldn’t), and their article says Fallout was released on October 10th, 1997. But apparently, to commemorate the supposed 20th anniversary, Steam made the game available for free on September 30th, 2017.

Yep, various websites and game stores contradict each other by using both dates. GOG, Steam, etc.
What's also funny is that if you Google Fallout 1, on the initial release date, it only gives the year that the game was released on. Whoever edited that didn't even bother to confirm either date!

 

[TheKingofVault14]

UPDATE: I actually completely forgot to do this when I first started this thread.
Um ever since I first learned about the misconception, I've been looking deeply into this by asking various members of the Development Team, a lot of them sadly couldn't remember,(Scott Campbell & Feargus Urquhart to name a few) while a few others do know or at least confirmed what the potential release date is.

And so here they're, the one's who've confirmed Fallout 1's Release Date being in October so far!

Mac Programmer: Tim Hume

PC QA Tester: Evan Chantland

Technical Designer: Scott Everts

Lead Designer: Chris Taylor

3D Head Animator: Erik Jamison
(Talking Heads)

And last but not least...

Designer: Brian Freyermuth
NOTE: I technically asked his wife Juliet Freyermuth due to them having a joint Instagram Account promoting their Blog/Website called Novels & Games, which you could see here for those who are wondering:
https://novelsandgames.com/about-us/

This is what they had to say on the matter:

Oh and she made a good point by saying this:

And that's all the people that I've asked about this so far! I guess you say that's good enough of a confirmation for the game being released in October, but I feel like that's still not enough. I mean I got two people who say it's the 7th, and then on the other hand I got three people who say it's the 10th. So there's still an ambiguous area here even though I've confirmed October being the month of FO1's release, and there's still a good amount of people I haven't even gotten the chance to ask yet! Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, Jason D. Anderson, Sharon Shellman, Fred Hatch, Eddie Rainwater, Gary Platner, Jason Taylor, David Hendee, Jesse Reynolds, Scott Rodenhizer, and Chris Jones.
I've been trying to find a way to contact them with no luck, does anyone know where or how I can contact them? Anybody? @TorontoReign @Risewild or any other OG members of the site who've been around since the days where contacting the Developers was a common occurrence?

I've tried LinkedIn, no luck there. I've even tried some other Social Media sources to no avail!

 

[Risewild]

Several weeks ago, I actually saw someone asking how to contact Tim Cain over at Reddit. They got replies from a user saying he's Tim Cain, so you could ask them. Although I have no idea if it's the real one or (most likely) just someone pretending to be Tim Cain:


Contacting Leonard Boyarsky should be easy (although getting a reply might be a different matter), since he has his own site with a "Contact Me" page:
https://leonardboyarsky.com/contact-me

I don't know how to contact anyone else on that list, sorry about that.

 

[TheKingofVault14]

Several weeks ago, I actually saw someone asking how to contact Tim Cain over at Reddit. They got replies from a user saying he's Tim Cain, so you could ask them. Although I have no idea if it's the real one or (most likely) just someone pretending to be Tim Cain:


Contacting Leonard Boyarsky should be easy (although getting a reply might be a different matter), since he has his own site with a "Contact Me" page:
https://leonardboyarsky.com/contact-me

I don't know how to contact anyone else on that list, sorry about that.

You know I did try contacting Leonard through his website, the thing is I don't know if it actually worked or not regarding my message going through.

That Tim Cain thing though sounds flipping fake! I mean really, especially on a place like Reddit? You're gonna have to really verify a few things in order for me to believe that you're the real deal!


EDIT: Okay, I probably shouldn't have made an assumption early on before actually going on Reddit and looking at the post!
After thoroughly looking through the Reddit account, and I can say that 99.9% confirm it's Tim Cain. So yeah, time to get to work!
Thank you so much @Risewild for giving me this lead!

 

[TheKingofVault14]

I asked, and he provided an answer!

Again, thanks @Risewild for letting me know about that Reddit post! Because I wouldn't have known about it otherwise.

Also I was expecting him to say October 10th, but the fact that he said October 7th now brings it to 3 people who've said it's the 7th, and 3 other people who've said it's the 10th. I mean since it's one of THE original creators of the game, does that make the October 7th release date ultimately valid then?


Heh, it's funny because even back then people like Brother None were saying the release date was October 7th and even he used The Development Logs as evidence of that being the case.

https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/happy-15th-birthday-fallout.199087/

Anyways, the 25th anniversary of both the Fallout series AND this website is coming soon. We need to get ready to celebrate, who's with me!?

 

[Risewild]

Glad you got a real answer.

 

[TheKingofVault14]

Glad you got a real answer.

IKR! I can't believe he actually replied back.