I imagine many here have played Fallout 3. If not, go get it - its incredible! But for those of us unable to wait until Fallout: New Vegas, are these 2 worth playing?

Fallout 1 and 2 were better than 3 in terms of game play. Fallout 1 was probably the better game, 2 suffered second system syndrome and had everything but the kitchen sink thrown in, which made for some larger areas with some neat stuff but an overall less consistent story and quite a few semi-retcons.

I still have those two on the laptop for days I'm stuck in airports.

On the other hand, play 1 before you play 2. Once you play fallout 2, you won't be able to stand how annoying the interface of 1 can be, while if you play 1 first, you don't realize how annoying it is.

I.E. Fallout 2 has a much better ui, and in my opinion, better jokes as well. Also, much much larger.

Only thing I remember being a big deal between 1&2 was the lack of the "loot all" button, 2 buggy as hell until the fan-patches got fleshed out -- which reminds me, No Mutants Allowed has a bunch of fan-made patches that fix innumerable bugs in various NPC interactions and scripts, particularly in 2, as well as enabling higher resolution display and hi-res textures.

ally ai. never give an automatic weapon to your friends in fallout 1.

Oh, hah. Yeah, I never used the AI companions at all except for the dog, who usually got himself killed. I tended to play more stealth oriented games.