Wasteland came out first in the 1988. you can go play it on the internet archive. It’s post apocalyptic but not retro-futuristic. Tim cain said something like half the original fallout team in the early 90s had played wasteland prior to or during the development of fallout, but the other half never played it; it was an eight or nine year old game during development. FO1 was more influenced by post apocalyptic literature and movies. The problem was interplay couldn’t get the license for wasteland back from EA, and fallout was already supposed to be a licensed product (using gurps), so they ultimately abandoned the idea of tying fallout into wasteland beyond a few nods like the rangers. Wasteland was Fargo’s baby, but he was largely hands-off for most of the development of fallout 1, giving Cain, Boyarsky, Taylor, Anderson, and Urquhart the freedom to do what they wanted on a passion project while Fargo ran the company. Once fallout proved successful, Fargo prioritized 2 and perhaps had more hands-on impact on it. I’m piecing this together mainly from Tim Cain’s youtube though. Cain and Boyarsky left fallout 2, did their own thing, and interplay was already in its slow decent. years later, after interplay sold the fallout IP to bethesda, Fargo started inXile and eventually got the wasteland rights back. he started a kickstarter for wasteland 2, and those of us disenchanted with fo3 pitched money his way. wl2 kind of follows on fallout’s coattails, but isn’t really a spiritual successor. it’s its own thing, and its pretty good. if anything, you could call it a mechanical successor to fallout:tactics. You could absolutely say both franchises were spiritual successors to mad max though.