Gamma World has left a strange footprint in the history of tabletop RPGs. People loved the game from the second it hit shelves – a rabid fan base persists today – but support for the game was sporadic and often mishandled. The first edition got just two adventure modules before the 1983 second edition came out, which also got two adventures before fizzling. This, the 1986 third edition, got five adventures, but was hobbled by atrocious editing and the inclusion of the faddish resolution table from Marvel Super Heroes that further broke the system. That’s a shame, because that Parkinson cover is a fantastic mood-setter, even after someone sits on your box set (I dunno if that is what happened to mine, but wow, is this box thrashed).

A fourth edition surfaced in 1992 and lasted a little over a year. The fifth edition was still-born, released in 2000 as a setting for the science fiction RPG Alternity, a month after Wizards of the Coast announced they were canceling the Alternity line. For real? The sixth edition, lacking any sense of humor, was developed by Sword & Sorcery Studio for the D20 System in 2003 and went unloved by the Gamma World faithful. A collectible card mechanic, widely seen as a cash grab, sank the seventh edition in 2010. Amusingly, each new edition features a new cause of the world’s end, so at least there’s that.

I won’t say that GW inspired stuff like He-Man, Thundarr or Stephen King’s Gunslinger, but they were all on a very specific vibe around the same time. It no doubt influenced Mutant Crawl Classics and probably was on someone’s mind during the development of the Wasteland and Fallout videogames.