The game is not entirely historically accurate

March 7, 2024 11:55 AM

The Oregon Trail is not just a game, it's a cherished piece of gaming history that transported players to a bygone era of exploration and survival.

You can also play: The Oregon Trail Deluxe, The Oregon Trail II, and The Yukon Trail

10 Things You May Not Know About The Oregon Trail Game

The Oregon Trail, previously:
You must always caulk the wagon
A Youth Untouched By Social Media [Link to article on LinkedIn as the original has died of dysentery]
The story behind Oregon Trail

And don't forget: When rivers were trails

posted by chavenet (34 comments total)

checked for "dysentery" tag, was not disappoint
posted by gwint at 12:23 PM on March 7 [13 favorites]

"It seems that having financial resources in the game could often help overcome various challenges, a far cry from reality."

Ha ha ha ha ha.
posted by Foosnark at 12:27 PM on March 7 [22 favorites]

The remake on Apple Arcade seems pretty good. According to this NPR article, they at least tried to incorporate Native American perspective.
posted by pwnguin at 12:39 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]

Ah, the memories of that one kid who managed to keep track of and save his progress on the same disk (because there was never enough time to completely finish before you had to get to class), with everybody standing around his computer watching him ride down the river to make it to Oregon on a green phosphorescent Apple ][e in the brand new high-tech computer lab in 1985. Those disks filled up with gravestones, some with people's real names, some with old-timey names, but a lot with the names 'butt' and 'fart' and 'boner'.
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:40 PM on March 7 [6 favorites]

and don't forget to play this excellent parody remake, Organ Trail
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:48 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]

is it weird to have nostalgia for nostalgia? Sometime in undergrad my roommates found a copy of this and loaded it up. One roommate in particular had a unique strategy: buy only bullets, and shoot only squirrels. I don't know that he ever made it to Oregon, but I think the statistic he was optimizing was "maximum number of hits, minimum amount of meat."
posted by adekllny at 12:54 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]

Here's a 1975 HP BASIC version with the following subroutine:

4515  ENTER #P,B2,B1,C$
4520  PRINT
4525  IF C$="BANG" THEN 4535

The B2 variable is the maximum # of seconds the user has to respond, and the actual time will be put into B1. A lower value in B1 gooses your chances of getting a NICE SHOT--RIGHT THROUGH THE NECK--FEAST TONIGHT!! message and your food variable incremented by a large quantity.
posted by credulous at 1:01 PM on March 7 [5 favorites]

I remember the TRS-80 version also had you type 'BANG' if bandits tried to rob your wagon. Presumably to fire a warning shot.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:41 PM on March 7 [2 favorites]

My favorite Oregon Trail homage was a flash game Thule made where you're driving cross-country to get to a music festival with some friends. The hunting mini-game featured random slices of pizza and cheeseburgers wandering through the woods.

Sadly I can't seem to find this online anymore. (RIP Flash)
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:44 PM on March 7 [5 favorites]

Please let me know when the thread devolves into same period computer lab experiences. I mean LOGO. Of course I do.
posted by atomicstone at 1:57 PM on March 7 [11 favorites]

The Yukon Trail is a much less interesting game than Oregon Trail, but we had it on my home PC (I assume it came free with the computer and my parents let us install it because it was theoretically educational) so I played it a lot. I suspect the developers decided they were tired of the "everyone dies" meme or that kids didn't like it, so in Yukon Trail you really can't die even if you try. Even if you attempt the journey without any supplies, you just don't get very much gold. I never found a way to not survive.

I remember it fondly because I discovered the high scores were stored in the clear in a .txt file and gave myself an impossibly high score which baffled and infuriated my sister. I wish I could tell you I knew what happens when you integer overflow the high scores but alas I was not that cool or creative a child.
posted by potrzebie at 2:05 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]

Grew up in the early 90s and only encountered this game by mention, have never played it in person. Thought for years the game was called "Organ Trail" and that it was an ultraviolent game. (First person shooters emerged just a couple years later and I've always thought a DOOM-like spoof called "Organ Trail" would be amazing.)
posted by kensington314 at 2:18 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]

We had The Amazon Trail at home. I don't remember it being as fun as Oregon Trail, which I played only on a Macintosh in the combined second- and third-grade classroom where I was a teacher's aide in middle school, usually but not always with a kid squeezed next to me for deniability.
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 2:20 PM on March 7 [2 favorites]

It’s funny, I actually had a life-threatening case of dysentery after eating dodgy falafel at an East Jerusalem street stand, and almost everyone I tell about it quotes this game to me.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 2:33 PM on March 7 [7 favorites]

> Sadly I can't seem to find this online anymore. (RIP Flash)

Looks like Thule Trail (previously) is playable on the Wayback Machine.
posted by Phssthpok at 2:40 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]

If you want to try the first Apple II version, which was pretty much a straight port of the BASIC version that credulous mentioned, I uploaded it to Internet Archive here: A.P.P.L.E PDS 108 - Oregon Trail

The page has a built-in Apple II emulator, so the disk image should run if you select the "Emulate It!" image.
posted by scruss at 2:51 PM on March 7 [7 favorites]

Most people between the ages of, say, 35 and 50, who grew up in the US, first encountered the word "dysentery" in Oregon Trail, and many have never heard it used in any context OTHER than Oregon Trail.
posted by potrzebie at 3:25 PM on March 7 [5 favorites]

I've always thought a DOOM-like spoof called "Organ Trail" would be amazing.

wish, command
posted by chavenet at 3:27 PM on March 7 [2 favorites]

Wow didn't notice when I posted that earlier, huh? Sheesh.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:13 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]

This is always cited as such a huge piece of GenX nostalgia but I have none for it. Probably because my school had a healthy pirate scene. All the nerdy kids had a few floppies full of little Apple II games.
posted by egypturnash at 5:30 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]

Quick straw poll: who says "OR-eh-gun" and who says "or-eh-GON"
posted by thecjm at 5:50 PM on March 7 [2 favorites]

Straw poll response: the people who say or-eh-GONE are the same people who rhyme Willamette with petty.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 6:33 PM on March 7 [5 favorites]

so, you all wanted the musical version, right? behold, The Trail to Oregon complete with regrettable name choices and unfortunate deaths
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 6:35 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]

I played a lot of a later, Windows 3.1 version of Oregon Trail Deluxe (I looked up the version through screenshots once, but I forget now). I played a tiny bit of the Apple II version as we found an old one of those left in a classroom in my elementary school and it had the disk for it with it.

I also played a lot of Yukon Trail and actually managed to get a ton of gold a couple of times if I recall correctly. I had Amazon trail, but recall not liking it (or possibly not getting it? I think it was meant for older kids then I was when we got it)
posted by Canageek at 6:49 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]

You don't need bullets at all if you just move to the future with Hiram.
posted by FatherDagon at 7:09 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]

rhyme Willamette with petty

my steampunk burlesque name
posted by clew at 8:03 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]

My mom ran an elementary school computer lab, and we got to bring home a computer every summer, therefore I had many hours on every version, starting with an apple II gs, then a Mac LC, and then a power Mac with the Cd-ROM. That being said going for the high score gets pretty boring fast, and even hunting runs out of steam after a while. But the nostalgia factor is still real.
posted by CostcoCultist at 8:57 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]

→ who says "OR-eh-gun" and who says "or-eh-GON"

"COR-ee-and-er"
posted by scruss at 2:41 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

I played this in BASIC at school in 1978 on a dumb terminal with a phone coupler that connected to the county's mainframe. I learned to type BANG very fast.
posted by JanetLand at 5:19 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

This isn't the first time it's been talked about on this site but there seems to be a small generation or sub-generation born between about 1978 and 1982 that doesn't really identify with gen-X or millennials. But we almost all played one of the earliest versions of The Oregon Trail, mostly on different kinds of Apple IIs in school. It was a commenter on here that coined us "The Oregon Trail Generation" which really resonates with me (born in 1980).
posted by VTX at 7:23 AM on March 8 [6 favorites]

I despise the GenX vs Millennials thing, disown both, and happily claim Oregon Trail Mini-Generation.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:25 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Oh, good, so I can be that mini-generation too; I'm really tired of being called a boomer.
posted by JanetLand at 11:31 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

I'd like to petition for a slight expansion. I was born in 83 and feel that this describes me very well.
posted by eruonna at 6:18 PM on March 9 [2 favorites]

Yeah the edges of these things are fuzzy, well, fuzzier than the rest anyways.
posted by VTX at 10:42 AM on March 10 [1 favorite]