There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Oregon Trail is the most popular, shittiest game to have survived for 3 decades. As far as I’m concerned, the oldest game in the entire world (excluding that game where you try to hang yourself so you can cut off blood to your brain and get a bit high). 3 decades of people dying, of digitalized tombstones sucking down dreams of an American Dream.
I for one, never beat Oregon Trail. Nay, me and my family members died. Sometimes our deaths were cruel, at the hands of Indians. Other times they were quick, like drowning while trying to ford the river. In the end, we all pined fjords. Sure, one time I killed 3678 pounds of wild buffalo meat in one shooting. And yes, I had to throw away 3178 pounds of that meat, and another 300 pounds eventually rotted. But I learned a valuable lesson. Video games are the tits.
So if this game means anything to you and your childhood, you will read this wonderful article about the origins of Oregon Trail.
With no monitor, the original version of Oregon Trail was played by answering prompts that printed out on a roll of paper. At 10 characters per second, the teletype spat out, “How much do you want to spend on your oxen team?” or, “Do you want to eat (1) poorly (2) moderately or (3) well?” Students typed in the numerical responses, then the program chugged through a few basic formulas and spat out the next prompt along with a status update.
“Bad illness—medicine used,” it might say. “Do you want to (1) hunt or (2) continue?”
If you are lazy, just click this picture.
