Are there any Fallout-like games for handhelds?

Here's a fun question to ponder. We all know that Fallout and its numerous descendants as well as those of the other big daddy of the subgenre being Baldurs Gate with Planescape Torment being the Trope Codifier for the whole 'Ethically Charged WRPG' type as a direct descendant of both - have had a lot of imitators, SpiritualSuccessors and other followers on the PC. But what about the handhelds?

And yes, I'm not meaning the post-apocalypse angle, I'm meaning the freeform character generation, the Karma Meter and moral compass aspects as well as the Anyone Can Die with a healthy dosage of The Dev Team Thinks of Everything and humongous dialogue trees. Like every game by Troika and Black Isle and Obsidian, or all Bio Ware's RP Gs, or all the other attempts at this, good and bad - The Witcher, Metalheart, Precursors and so on.

Because aside from Sonic Chronicles and Mazes Of Fate for the DS, I know of exactly zero other games that fit this subgenre properly. Mass Effect Galaxies is bordering on this - it has the dialogues and a semblance of branching, but it's a SHMUP, and one with clunky controls to boot. Same goes for Spiderman Web Of Shadows for the PSP/DS, it had Karma Meter-based dialogues, but it was a Metroidvania. A good one, but not an RPG, still.

And no, Dos Box + Fallout DOS are not an option. None of the current-gen handhelds can emulate DOS at this level yet. I know of the unofficial project of porting the Fallout engine to Windows Mobile, but it's Russian-made, buggy, based on a crappy unlicensed translation of Fallout 2 and epically slow. And I can handle only this many playthroughs of Wasteland (which is the Ur-Example, as far as I know). And I'm keeping Fountain Of Dreams (Ur-Example Jr., same engine, similar approach, different design team) safe until a better time, preferrably when I will be able to sink a few months into it non-stop, which means waiting until my Ph.D. is finally over with.

For purposes of this conversation - handhelds = current-gen ones. D Si, PSP, iPhone. Feel free to complain about the underdevelopment of the genre outside the PC and X-Boxes along with me.

edited 29th Jan '11 2:43:18 AM by Noelemahc

Actually, you have a point there: WRPGs in general tend to only be on PC and/or console, whereas JRPGs tend to only be on console and/or handheld. I wonder why that is...

Probably because the major consoles have (almost) always been Japanese, so naturally Japanese developers publish on consoles. Also, early western RP Gs were on computer, that's where the fanbase developed, and later games followed. The Ultima series, the first real RPG franchise that defined the genre, was for computer.

I don't know of any Fallout like games on any handheld, past or present.

edited 29th Jan '11 3:02:19 AM by Talby

No, there ARE WRP Gs on consoles, it's just that they're all of the hack-n-slash dungeon-crawlie variety. Silverfall, Dungeon Siege, the bazillions of Diablo expies... They're all less about role-playing and more about bashing a randomly-generated zombie's skull in in a randomly-generated dungeon. Sometimes this crosses over into hilarious territory - the port of Eye Of The Beholder for the GBA turned it from a common first-person crawlie into a Gold Box-style one.

Besides, JRP Gs aren't bad - Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey also matches my description, plus it's a rare thing to see a DS game that uses so many ClusterFBombs.

Uh, by 'consoles', do you mean handheld consoles or regular consoles? Because there are plenty of WRPGs on regular consoles.

Sorry, my bad. Handhelds, of course. And yes, I understand how economic viability, target markets and gameplay chunkability come into the mix, and how it's not as rewarding for a publisher to get involved with an epic WRPG for a portable something than it is with a non-portable something, specifically since you can't go for the eye-candy solution AND are strapped for storage space.

I remember Ossian studios (they worked on some Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 premium modules) was working on an I Pad fantasy WRPG that fits your description.. aside from that I'm afraid there's nothing that fits your bill, AFAIK.

^...Ipad?

Urgh, the software interpreted IPhone/IPad as a link. But yeah, of course the game is planned for I Pads too.

I think Id Software made Doom RPG and Wolfenstein RPG for mobile devices, but yeah, there's not much in that department you speak of.

They did, but they're thematical hack-and-slashers, again. Very nice ones, mind you, Doom II RPG in particular looks like some bizarre System Shock + Doom crossover fanfic writer's wet dream, but they're still roguelikes without the random level generation. Which is sorta sad, because Doom Roguelike will probably never be ported off comp00ters.

edited 29th Jan '11 12:10:31 PM by Noelemahc

The "branching path" games tend to be on PC because of space and hardware limitations, if you want customization you have to make all the parts necessary for it and then make sure all possible combinations work, to have a branching storyline you must create new areas and dialogue for each path or choice, overall this leads to a lot of data that goes beyond the scope of handhelds.

I'm personally pretty amazed considering the rabid modding community that there isn't any project to create a modern source-port engine for the first two games. The closest thing I can recall, IanOut, died and turned into FIFE, which now strenuously denies any ties to Fallout and seems openly hostile to the idea of being used to run it with.

FOOL has some sort of spin-off project for this, IIRC.

But there are mods to increase the resolution, update the special effects, etc., it's just that everything's going to be too damn tiny on a modern LCD screen's 'common' resolution. Honestly, the amount of people who ignore the existence of pixel doubling for such games (to keep everything crisp and NOT tiny) is staggering.

edited 30th Jan '11 12:26:13 AM by Noelemahc

The problem with that is it's not portable, so (for example) the Omni Group port is left out in the cold, and most other folk must resort to WINE. Also, it doesn't allow for radical interface work, so making it play well on a cellphone or gamepad is basically impossible without source access or a reverse engineered engine.

I'd rather necropost than start a new thread with the same senseless question, so here goes: are there any of these for the Wii? The closest that I've heard of seems to be Epic Mickey, as even though it's not an RPG, it has a sufficiently efficient Karma Meter and Warren Spector as its supporting points.

edited 17th Feb '11 5:28:38 AM by Noelemahc

Once again, remember target markets. And also remember that WRP Gs favour power.

Oh, I remember that well, but I still had to ask =)

If you have an Apple iProduct, there's a game called Aralon: Sword and Shadow. It's meant to be a western RPG with modern polygon graphics for iOS. It got good reviews from Slide to Play and RPG Fan. A lot of the comments on iTunes talk about game-crashing bugs, so keep that in mind.