Those who are in their mid-20s to late-30s and grew up in the U.S. know what I’m talking about here. The video game where you went back to 1848, traveled the trail, hunted buffalo, bought rations and wrote cuss words on tombstones. If you grew up in the '70s or '80s this may have have even been one of the first video games you ever played.
The game celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, and CityPages, a weekly paper out of Minneapolis/St. Paul ran a pretty interesting story about its creation.
So what are your memories of playing this? I played on the Apple II. Did anyone here ever play the advanced versions that came out in the '90s? On the days we had computer lab in elementary school (this would have been in the late '80s) the kids raced in there to get one of the three copies our school had. In the winter, a lot of people even stayed in during recess to play it.
Myself, sometimes I would even go out of my way to kill the characters off, just so I could write funny stuff on their tombstones (like “Here Lies Shithead, He Led a Crappy Existence”). I eventually got in pretty big trouble for it.
Anyway the article also mentions that Facebook is coming out with its own version of Oregon Trail next month. I’m guessing my productivity at work is going to take a massive hit.
As a sidenote, I decided to just stick this in Cafe Society for now, but if the mods feel it belongs in the Game Room, please feel free to move it.
I always played the Banker, screw the farmer there ain’t no heroes on the trail!
Who didn’t name everyone in his wagon after his friends and then laugh their ass off as they drowned or died of snake bites. That game was almost like an archaic version of The Sims.
Oh, god, that was one of the first video games I ever played and we played the HELL out of it. I had kind of a competition going on with my dad. We played on our Apple IIGS. You have lost: 2 oxen, 40 pounds of food, and Zsofia (drowned).
I remember playing it on my aunt’s computer in the mid-80s; she still had a green screen monitor. Later my parents got me the fancier 16-color version of it. Loved that game; was still playing it as late as 2000 I think.
I played the lemonade stand game. It was also one of my favorites, though I think only once did I manage to make the $100 and become a “lemonade tycoon.”
Was that the one where you started off selling apples (unlimited supply of them for free; the only variable was what you set the price at to determine how many would be sold), then tomato plants (for which you also paid for advertising), then the lemonade stand where you had to pay for raw materials, make the lemonade in advance according to the weather forecast, etc.?
When our favorite teacher retired right after my year, she left us her entire collection of educational Apple ][e games. We had them all.
I never could figure out how to cross rivers. It seemed every time I tried to float across it tipped and every time I tried to ford it I sank. I tried to write down the depths and figure it out but it always seemed to be random.
I made it to Oregon though. I think twice out of 20 tries.
Oh, there was also one with bees who did their various dances, and all those math ones where you had to do a bunch of problems to play the little games - one with winter Olympic sports as the games?
This is great…I recently found an emulator of Oregon Trail, and it is just as much fun as it used to be. I continued to be too cheap to hire the Indian to help us across the river, and lost several people to drowning.
Excellent memory on Odell Lake - I was just talking about this to my son. And Lemonade Stand - forgot about that one, but I’ll be looking for it tonight!
Anyone remember Number Crunchers? I used to rock at that game!
I just feel quite certain that if I were a pioneer and I had my whole family (Shitface, Asshole, and Fart - Mom died of dysentery) with me, we could haul a whole lot more than a hundred goddamned pounds of meat back to the wagon.
