One fan figured out how to port Fallout 1 to Nintendo 3DS, and it’s a lot easier than you think

Interplay’s 1997 role-playing game works surprisingly well on 3DS

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The isometric role-playing game Fallout has inspired two decades of striking, apocalyptic media, but that doesn’t mean fans can’t find room for its improvement.

While IP holder Bethesda is distracted, focusing on its popular new Amazon PrimeFallout TV show(and, apparently,a follow-upto 2015’s Fallout 4), one fan put their efforts into innovating. Ultimately, they managed to take Fallout where it’s never gone before: the Nintendo 3DS.

“I’ve had the first Fallout for years, but it’s always ran too crappy on my PC and I never get far,” the Reddit user u/Loopuze1 writesin a recent post. “This awesome 3DS port is running great (even if it is a little clunky having to cycle between left and right click with the L button).”

Fallout released 27 years ago, which translates to 27,000 mods ago. In its first few years of existence, you could only play the game on Mac and Windows, but now easy-to-follow port instructions have let Fallout fans play the RPG on strange devices liketheir Android phonesand the 2011handheld PS Vita.

So, playing on 3DS seems natural at this point. The port u/Loopuze1 uses seems to efficiently adapt Fallout to the Nintendo console’s dual screens, making it so that the top screen either shows a heads-up display or a more cinematic and zoomed-in version of what’s on the bottom screen.

Bringing Fallout to your device like this is a simpler process than you’d expect. As u/Loopuze1 describes it, all you need to do is “install it, copy over files from your original, legally purchased copy, and you’re good to go.” They referenceinstructionsposted on the video game forum GBAtemp, where the user MrHuu shared theirGitHublink for the necessary port downloads. They released their latest version on May 6.

When you’re done playing, discoverthe best Fallout games, ranked.

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Ashley Bardhan is a critic from New York who covers gaming, culture, and other things people like. She previously wrote Inverse’s award-winning Inverse Daily newsletter. Then, as a Kotaku staff writer and Destructoid columnist, she covered horror and women in video games. Her arts writing has appeared in a myriad of other publications, including Pitchfork, Gawker, and Vulture.

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