You must always caulk the wagon.

February 18, 2017 6:45 AM

The Forgotten History of 'The Oregon Trail,' As Told By Its Creators (Previously, previouslier, previousliest)

Simulator, DOS version, on Archive.org

posted by ZeusHumms (34 comments total)

This thread has died of dysentery.
posted by Nanukthedog at 7:12 AM on February 18, 2017 [15 favorites]

Peperony & chease
posted by leotrotsky at 7:34 AM on February 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

I has such great fun playing the game with the nephews. I bet it'd be cool to get them together and play it instead of card night.
posted by james33 at 7:36 AM on February 18, 2017

The Digital Antiquarian covers the history of The Oregon Trail pretty well too.
posted by Et En Arcata Ego at 7:37 AM on February 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

I was a tiny bit disappointed that this wasn't a clickhole article.
posted by schmod at 7:38 AM on February 18, 2017 [10 favorites]

From the animals you shot, you got 1,152 pounds of meat. However, you were only able to carry 100 pounds back to the wagon.

One of the rarely mentioned causes of the near extinction of the American Bison: bored middle schoolers.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:41 AM on February 18, 2017 [25 favorites]

I was a tiny bit disappointed that this wasn't a clickhole article.

Hah, I was also wondering about the source of the article. It's Vice, and it looks to be 100% real.

But if it's Clickhole you want, here's a Clickventure: Can You Survive The Great Journey Out West?
posted by filthy light thief at 7:47 AM on February 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

They mention the statute of limitations as the reason for not getting paid once Oregon Trail went for-profit. But if copyright infringement is ongoing, does the limitation period ever start?
posted by jacquilynne at 8:14 AM on February 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

I always puff up with foolish pride when I remember that the guys who wrote The Oregon Trail went to Carleton. Anyone else feel like singing with me? "O, Carleton, my alma maaaaater, we hail the maize and blue..."
posted by colfax at 8:23 AM on February 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

Heh, I just played through the emulator and I found it significantly easier than I remembered. Who knew my 4th grade strategy of stopping to hunt dozens of bison every 10 seconds was counterproductive? And always caulk the wagon.
posted by Wretch729 at 8:38 AM on February 18, 2017

So, I'm playing the DOS simulator and fucking Jody, man.

Jody has Dysentary.
Jody has a broken leg.
Jody is lost, lose 5 days.

5 days, Jody. We don't have 5 days of food to cover just sitting around waiting for you to show up again. We couldn't even hunt in those 5 days, because we had to keep looking for your worthless ass.

Just die already. We'll make you a nice headstone and then maybe the rest of us can get to Oregon. Jesus Christ.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:39 AM on February 18, 2017 [18 favorites]

Right now I go to Carleton College, the school they attended while they coded the game. I guess our school must not produce too many famous game developers, since the administration is weirdly very proud of the fact that it was made here.

Unfortunately for us, last year, this pride resulted in a terrible, terrible commencement speech (starts at 15:30) where our President concludes that the Oregon Trail is — and this is a quote — "a brilliant metaphor for the essential elements and enduring value of an undergraduate liberal arts experience." He also mentions the Native Americans that appear in the game, and you can just imagine how well that concept is explored.
posted by rlio at 10:09 AM on February 18, 2017 [7 favorites]

Is the card game at Target any good?
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:36 AM on February 18, 2017

The card game is very, very hard to win, and can be very frustrating for that reason. Not worth playing with fewer than 4 people in my experience. The instructions aren't particularly well-written, either, so the first game can take a while.

If you like writing causes of death on tombstones (usually snakebite or dysentery), it's the game for you!
posted by minsies at 10:50 AM on February 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Well, my entire family died, and I arrived with two broken limbs and a snakebite, but I made it. Woo hoo!
posted by Pater Aletheias at 11:24 AM on February 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

My SiL worked as a programmer at MECC for a while, and she brought home a bunch of copies of it when it was a boxed, commercial product. It seemed so odd to actually hold something that, years before, I had only seen on an Apple ][ screen.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:05 PM on February 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

It's a shame that the BASIC version is lost. I guess there weren't that many platters or reels or decks around from the time for it to have withstood entropy.
posted by scruss at 12:20 PM on February 18, 2017

jacquillyne: Jody has Dysentary.
Jody has a broken leg.
Jody is lost, lose 5 days.

5 days, Jody. We don't have 5 days of food to cover just sitting around waiting for you to show up again. We couldn't even hunt in those 5 days, because we had to keep looking for your worthless ass.

If it takes you five days to locate this Jody who is limping from a leg fracture and leaving you a helpful trail of diarrhea to follow, then you should rethink this whole westward expansion thing.
posted by dr_dank at 12:33 PM on February 18, 2017 [39 favorites]

Thanks to the DOS emulator I just played my very first game* of Oregon Trail and I made it to Oregon! 1600+ points. Is that good? I ended with all five people I started with, the they had various injuries and health issues. I think I ended with about 50lbs of food.

This is my proudest achievement so far in 2017.

*My schools always had TRS-80s so I never had a lot of time on Apples growing up.
posted by bondcliff at 1:38 PM on February 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

If you like writing causes of death on tombstones (usually snakebite or dysentery), it's the game for you!

I was a very simple kid - I would play the game just to kill people off so that I could get to my favorite part, laughing my ass off when it asked what I wanted on the tombstone and I would write "pepperoni and cheese."
posted by barchan at 1:43 PM on February 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

goddammit leotrotsky somehow I missed your comment entirely
posted by barchan at 1:55 PM on February 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

The reaction of the faculty at the school was not so positive. I heard from Paul that we needed to eliminate any negative references to Native Americans. Since my generation had grown up on TV cowboy shows, my first reaction was that we were denying a piece of our own history. But upon reconsidering, I realized how powerful this game was in terms of immersing students into history. If any students of Native American ancestry played the game (and I'm sure there were plenty), they would be put in the position of constantly battling themselves.

It's nice to be reminded that on many occasions, the dice roll of our history turned out well. Also, Minneapolis teachers is the early 1970s sound pretty great.

Also, neat!
posted by eotvos at 4:30 PM on February 18, 2017

Thanks to the DOS emulator I just played my very first game* of Oregon Trail and I made it to Oregon! 1600+ points. Is that good? I ended with all five people I started with, the they had various injuries and health issues. I think I ended with about 50lbs of food.

I'm currently stranded, because somehow a thief managed to steal 11 of my 12 oxen. And then the stupid last oxen died.

Seriously, who steals 11 oxen???

And no one wants to trade with me. Why isn't there a "steal someone else's oxen" option? Or how about, tame a wild bear and make it pull your wagon?
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:01 PM on February 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

*My schools always had TRS-80s so I never had a lot of time on Apples growing up.

In Computer Class, we played Oregon Trail on the lab's brand new Macintosh LC-II computers, but our own classroom had a derelict TRS-80 that only had two floppy diisks: Zork and Oregon Trail.

In the TRS-80 version, hunting consisted entirely of typing B-A-N-G as fast as you could. There was no mouse driven crosshairs or even a little guy walking around the screen with a gun. Whenever you chose to hunt, the game would simply instruct you to "Type BANG as fast as you can!" and if you did so it would then tell you how much meat you returned with.

It was the same thing for bandits, though I think you may have had to type something else really, really fast.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:58 PM on February 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

I worked part time for a school district back in the 80s maintaining the computer labs for several Elementary schools. As soon as I got done pulling crayons and gunk out of the disk drive slots, I'd usually have to reinstall Oregon Trail. Every school I ever visited had that "Educational" program.
posted by CrowGoat at 7:58 PM on February 18, 2017

Oh man, a huge part of my childhood consisted of thinking up "clever" names for my Oregon Trail family, including "Polly Ester," "Nobody" (Nobody has died of dysentery!), "Poop" just in the HOPES Poop would die of dysentery, "YOUR MOM," and -- always, for my youngest child -- "Death." I feel like the youngest died first the most often and seeing "Death has died" was very satisfying.

I have a 25% finished cross stitch around here somewhere that says "You have died of dysentery" in the OT font.

"I always puff up with foolish pride when I remember that the guys who wrote The Oregon Trail went to Carleton."

Back in the day I applied to and toured Carleton which was a significant commitment as it was a more-than-six-hour drive from Chicago. I was very excited about Carleton, and they totally mentioned Oregon Trail on the campus tour, but at the end, my mom and I were super-hungry and chatting with the tour leader, and my mom said, "I would kill for a bagel," and the 20-year-old tour leader said, "A ... what?" and we were like, "THIS IS MUCH FARTHER FROM MINNEAPOLIS THAN WE WERE LED TO BELIEVE."

(Upon investigation, the only bagels available at Carleton in 1995 were Thomas' supermarket bagels, which -- they're fine, but no. They had very fancy coffee, but bagels had just not made it there yet. Also, just because this is weird, I have not one but THREE friends who went to St. Olaf's and majored in violin, none of whom grew up in Minnesota or are Lutheran -- that's weird, right? And none of them overlapped or knew each other!)

Anyway, brb, gotta go kill Death.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:27 PM on February 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

I needed this today. Thanks a pixelated cartful.
posted by mrdaneri at 7:23 AM on February 19, 2017

I love this picture of the creators so much. More so because I am certain that they did not plan to wear matching denim jackets.
posted by Panjandrum at 7:33 AM on February 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

I can confirm Oregon Trail was mentioned on a tour I was given of Carleton when I flew out there for a job interview.
posted by dismas at 8:03 AM on February 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

If you do want to geek out to the ancient source code, there's a series of articles about tracking it down starting here: On the Trail of the Oregon Trail

(they found the 1975 version, which runs sporadically on a net-connected HP 2100. There are a couple of cruder Apple II versions on Archive.org, hard-to-read copy in a scan of Creative Computing of May 1978, and David Ahl's version renamed as Westward Ho!)
posted by scruss at 12:10 PM on February 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Strangely hungry for some meager rations...
posted by benadryl at 8:12 PM on February 19, 2017

laughing my ass off when it asked what I wanted on the tombstone and I would write "pepperoni and cheese."

Holy shitballs, I *JUST* realized what the joke is there (rather than it just being non-sequitur to an 8 year old). This is like the impact of a shoe that took thirty years to drop..
posted by FatherDagon at 4:51 AM on February 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

Also: Achewood Completeness is fulfilled.
posted by FatherDagon at 4:53 AM on February 20, 2017

I feel like the youngest died first the most often and seeing "Death has died" was very satisfying.

Apparently the 1850s qualify as strange aeons.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:28 AM on February 20, 2017 [1 favorite]