"might bore or disappoint Diablo fans, but will be welcome to most hard-core RPGers." The companions were criticized because the player could not control them directly. Vaughn said the combat was great when playing without companions and frustrating when playing with them. Sales Fallout was commercially successful, although it was not as popular as other role-playing video games such as Baldur's Gate and Diablo. It did not meet sales expectations, but developed a fan following and sold enough copies for a sequel to be produced. In the United States, it debuted at No. 12 on PC Data's computer game sales rankings for October 1997. CNET Gamecenter noted that the game was part of a trend of role-playing successes that month, alongside Ultima Online and Lands of Lore 2: Guardians of Destiny, and said, "If October's list is any indication, [role-playing games] are back." Fallout sold 53,777 copies in the US by the end of 1997. Worldwide, over 100,000 copies were shipped by December 1997, and Erik Bethke reported sales of over 120,000 copies after a year. By March 2000, 144,000 copies had been sold in the US alone. GameSpot called these "very good sales, especially since the overall [worldwide] figures are likely double those amounts". Fallout was unpopular in the United Kingdom, where sales for it and its sequel totaled just over 50,000 combined lifetime sales by 2008. In 2017, Fargo said in an interview that Fallout sold a total of 600,000 copies. Awards and accolades The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Fallout for its "Personal Computer: Role Playing Game of the Year" and "Outstanding Achievement in Sound and Music" awards. Similarly, the Computer Game Developers Conference nominated Fallout for its "Best Adventure/RPG" Spotlight Award. Fallout received GameSpot's "Best Role-Playing Game" and "Best Ending" prize; and was nominated for GameSpot "Game of the Year". It also won Computer Games Magazine "Role-Playing Game of the Year" award. Legacy Influence The 1990s saw a decline in the popularity of computer role-playing games as a result of stale settings and ideas, competition with other genres, and poor quality assurance. Fallout has been credited as one of several innovative role-playing games that revived the genre's popularity. In 2000, CNET Gamecenter Mark H. Walker wrote, "The RPG genre was clearly in a slump in the mid-'90s, but... the renaissance began when Interplay's Fallout hit store shelves." Rowan Kaiser, writing for Engadget, called Fallout