The system requirements are Windows 95/98, Pentium 90 or faster (120 recommended), 16 MB RAM (32 Recommended), 30 MB available hard drive space (150 MB recommended), Direct X certified SCGA card, Direct X certified sound card, 4X or faster CD-ROM drive, Windows 95/98/NT SP3, and a 100% Microsoft-compatible mouse.
No, and Interplay does not have any plans of creating a demo, either.
Nope. Basically, as stated on the Interplay site, the company would not be able to turn a profit on a Macintosh version, and therefore will not be creating one.
No. Fallout 2 uses the same 2D engine as its original, so there is no need for an accelerator.
Yes, there are patches for the US, UK, French, and German versions of the game. All of these patches can be found on the Fallout 2 downloads page on this site. However, there is not a patch for the ELV (English Low Violence) version of the game. Also, keep in mind that saved games are not compatible with the patch and installing the wrong patch will corrupt portions of the game.
There is no official saved game converter. However, there is a third party converter that works beautifully (at least for the US version). You can find the converter on the Fallout 2 downloads page.
Yes, there are some steps that can be taken to speed up the load times. First off, make sure that you have the latest patch. Also, make sure that absolutely nothing is running in the background, especially virus programs or messaging programs. If that doesn't help, try running the game off of a Large install instead of Huge.
If you are still having problems, there is a third party solution. First off, use the Large install size. Then, copy the MASTER.DAT file from the CD to the hard drive FALLOUT 2 directory. Next, change the fallout.cfg file to point to the FALLOUT 2 directory instead of your CD drive. (change the line "master_dat=D:\master.dat" to "master_dat=C:\Program Files\Interplay\ Fallout 2\master.dat")
Another third party solution for Windows 95 is as follows: The file system in Win95 has three settings: laptop, workstation, and server. If you have more than 64MB of main memory, set this to 'server mode' to improve load times. If you have LESS than 64MB, server mode can actually decrease load times.
A guide for installing Fallout 2 on Vista can be found here.