Wagon breaks down

April 13, 2024 8:32 AM

In 1971, three student teachers in Minneapolis, MN created a little computer game about westward expansion in the United States. Over 50 years later, The Oregon Trail series has sold more than 65 million copies and has been inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. But the original creators never made a penny off the game. This is a lovely, slow-placed documentary about how the game was made and spread, with background information about the state of the computer industry and education in MN at the time.

You may feel like we were just talking about Oregon Trail, and we were! But to my knowledge this is not a duplicate and it was so charming I thought it deserved space. Rather than a long line of Previouslies I am going to link to chavenet’s great post about the game from March 7.

posted by bq (13 comments total)

Joy Lisi Rankin's eye-opening A People's History of Computing in the United States clued me in to the major role the Twin Cities (and Minnesota more broadly) have played, and includes a chapter focused on Oregon Trail. Look forward to watching this.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:42 AM on April 13 [3 favorites]

Damn dysentry!
posted by fairmettle at 8:52 AM on April 13 [1 favorite]

Max Miller: What Pioneers ate on the Oregon Trail.
posted by Pendragon at 8:59 AM on April 13 [1 favorite]

From Decoder Ring

In 1992, a Minnesota-based software company known for its educational hit The Oregon Trail released another simulation-style game to school districts across the country. Freedom! took kids on a journey along the Underground Railroad, becoming the first American software program to use slavery as its subject matter.

Less than four months later, it was pulled from the market.
posted by stevil at 9:55 AM on April 13 [7 favorites]

We played that game at school and then died on purpose so we could leave gravestones saying “Kevin is a douche” or whatever. Good times!!
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:20 AM on April 13 [2 favorites]

I basically played MASH with killing off dudes in that game. (And now MASH is an app.)
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:26 AM on April 13

stevil's link is broken. Here's the correct link. Also, it's a podcast.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:44 AM on April 13 [1 favorite]

One of my young friends at law school said to me recently, "I'm playing this new game, it's called the Oregon Trail.." So apparently it's Hot With The Kids.
posted by corb at 11:03 AM on April 13 [3 favorites]

stevil's podcast does have a transcript, though it's not proofread. Fascinating story. There's are several huge differences between packaged software and a facilitated experience, is one takeaway.
posted by away for regrooving at 12:40 PM on April 13

I was exposed to OREGON's reintroduction to Twin Cities students in the middle 1970s by MECC as described in the documentary. This was maybe fifth or sixth grade. Apparently they had a shortage of teletype terminals because they sent us student teachers instead, with mimeographed worksheets, and we made our resource allocation choices on paper for Week One.

They gathered them up and promised to return with results and more paper worksheets for Week Two.

They showed up again on Week Two, with worksheets for Week Three, but without information about Week One. Like, we were supposed to prepare for Week Three on paper without feedback about what happened after Week One.

They didn't show up for Week Three.

I suspect that they learned from our test group that they should always show up with at least a computer.
posted by Scarf Joint at 6:47 PM on April 13

My SiL worked for MECC for a while and I was most impressed by her association with "Oregon Trail."
posted by wenestvedt at 7:14 PM on April 13

I never typed Oregon Trail into a computer but I did type plenty of programs into computers out of magazines. At first actual written computer code but then later fancier programs would be typed in as hex strings or something. It was a bitch because if that checksum didn't come back right, you'd made an error but you never knew where!

I played lots of Oregon Trail on Apple ][ computers in elementary school. I'm not sure what age I was when we stopped playing that but certainly by high school.
posted by hippybear at 7:44 PM on April 13

Someone, mercy knows who, decided to bring to market a hand-held Oregon Trail that looks a bit like a knock-off Gameboy.

It was so popular that when a friend found a large discount bin of them at somewhere like Target, they were priced low enough that he bulk bought the batch and gave them out as presents to everyone he knew for a full year.

It's truly An Artifact™️, weird and wonderful. I'm pleased to own two. One that I've taken out and played with and one still in package, awaiting the perfect moment to pass along and blow someone's mind.
posted by foxtongue at 9:10 PM on April 13 [7 favorites]