In 1991 in my first year class, I pulled a chair up to an Apple II and inserted a disk with a faded, frayed label: The Oregon Trail.
I didn’t know how to play. I didn’t even know what one Oregon Trail was. Even so, I was instantly hooked – and I wasn’t alone. My classmates and I have gathered The Oregon Trail at every learning break, leave Reader rabbit to collect dust.
It was my first computer game, but I was far from the first player in the game. The students struggling to face the original’s deadly journey were old enough when I started the game to have children of their own. The Oregon Trail Now celebrating its 50th birthday, it is actually the first video game franchise to survive half a century.
The Oregon Trail was originally played with printer
The Oregon Trail should be a board game.
Don Rawitsch, a teacher training student in Minneapolis, wanted a new way of teaching history. He envisioned a board game that would allow students to experience the Oregon Trail, manage resources, and make life and death decisions on the infamous hike.
But his roommates Paul Dillenberger and Bill Heineman had a suggestion. What if The Oregon Trail was a computer game? Bryant Junior High, the school the trio taught, had an HP 2100 computer, and Rawitsch’s roommate was learning to program in BASIC.
The trio went nuts the original The Oregon Trail in two weeks. It was a text-based game played on the teletype terminal and had no display. Instead, the students typed in commands and received a printout of the results. The first gamer to die of a snakebite learned his fate from the slow cacophony of a printer in the early 1970s.
This original version was only playable for a week before Rawitsch had to move the teletype to another classroom. Fortunately, he ended the run of the game with a decision by the galaxy-brain: he printed out a copy of the game code before it was deleted from the school’s computer.
1974 Rawitsch took a job at MECC and made the game available for use in the company’s educational title library. The Oregon Trail, like many games from that era, would have been lost forever without this single scroll.
The iconic Apple II version
The version of The Oregon Trail Spit out of a printer in 1971 – around 800 lines of code in total – was a foundation. But it wasn’t the version that became the star and eventually spawned countless memes. It was the 1985 release of the game for the Apple II that its legacy engraved on a generation’s mind.
This wasn’t technically the first release of the game for the Apple II: the 1975 version was ported to the Apple II in 1978 and later in a MECC software package called. expelled Base tape 6. But as you can imagine, a game originally developed for the teletypewriter began to show its age as home PCs capable of turning color graphics from dream to reality.
R. Philip Bouchard, a software engineer hired by MECC in 1981 to improve the company’s software for the Apple II The Oregon Trail became obsolete.
“In mid-1983 I was arguing that MECC had to create a new version immediately,” Bouchard said in an email. “Most Apple II commercial software was developed by teams of professionals who invested thousands of hours producing complex, highly polished works. Compared to these new products is the early Apple II version of OREGON [the title of the game on its first commercial release] looked extremely rough. “
Bouchard’s efforts to modernize the game included a complete overhaul of the game’s presentation. Although it relied heavily on text, the game received a massive visual upgrade with color graphics from Charolyn Kapplinger, the project’s lead artist. Their iconic work surpassed the presentation of most of the PC games available at the time.
But the second release of Apple II was more than just a new coat of paint. Reinvented it The Oregon Trail‘s core gameplay to take advantage of modern computers.
“I found the existing product to be far too simple compared to the 1983 standards, with too little educational content and too few options for the player to make decisions,” says Bouchard.
This is the version that debuted many of the game’s core features. Arcade-style hunting, traversing rivers, notable family members – and, yes, dysentery – were all new to the 1985 game.
It also placed a high value on the notorious difficulty of the franchise. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I never really hit The Oregon Trail on the Apple II. None of my class either. We might have been better off had we had more time – the computer was only available during study breaks and breaks – but nonetheless, my group fell victim to the dangers of the trail dozens of times.
“I made the game pretty difficult on purpose,” says Bouchard. “Hardly anyone who plays the game for the first time makes it to Oregon.”
The difficulty was in part a reflection of the development team’s research into the real hazards of the trail. The National Park Service estimates up to 10 percent of the pioneers who set out died on the journey. But it also came out of MECC’s request that Bouchard develop a game that would appeal to families who have a PC at home.
“Because my job was to create a product for the home market, I had to come up with a design that a player could enjoy for 20, 30 or 40 hours before they got tired of the game,” says Bouchard. “I had to use every tool available to me to incorporate replayability into the product.”
Bouchard was optimistic about the potential of The Oregon Trail when his team completed the project in July 1985. MECC was keen to market its new update to a popular title. Still, the success of the game exceeded all expectations. It was so popular that MECC’s customers “went into rebellion” because the original plan was to only make it available to the home market. MECC soon gave in and laid down The Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail gets a glow
The release of Apple II ushered in a new era for The Oregon Trail. MECC would port the game to DOS, Windows, and Macintosh. A continuation, The Oregon Trail II, was released in 1995, followed by several new iterations through 2001. They aren’t as iconic as the 1985 version, but I’m sure there are a few players who have a thing for their, uh, weird mix of full 90s moves Video and rendered backgrounds.
Unfortunately, the franchise was brought to a standstill in a suitably American fashion: a business disaster. After a series of ill-considered acquisitions, the game ended up in the hands of a textbook publisher (the rights are now owned by HarperCollins).
It was neglected until 2009 when the franchise attempted a comeback. But the games just weren’t up to date. Gameloft had some success with modernized remakes for the DS, but also released a predictable Farmville spin-off that had little in common with the game’s origins. It was flanked by a Wii version with a mini-game (from another developer) that was so bad that death from dysentery might seem like a blessing.
Now, The Oregon Trail tries another possible comeback with a game from Gameloft. An exclusive Apple Arcade exclusive that, thankfully free of microtransactions, successfully mimics the feel of the game when I was seven – and isn’t that the point?
I was a little surprised to learn that the game was being developed by Gameloft’s studio in Brisbane, Australia.
“was not known to me [The Oregon Trail] I used to be from Australia, but I was faced with it. ” Jarrad Trudgen, Creative Director at Gameloft Brisbane, said in an interview. “As part of popular culture, it still gets a lot of memes.”
Trudgen’s team, made up of thirty developers in Brisbane, backed by colleagues in Montreal and New York, delved deep into the 1985 classic to understand how it worked.
“The Oregon Trail is probably the original roguelike, ”says Trudgen. “It had the rogue element of Permadeath, random events, the game is always different but without the battle of Villain. ”However, the team also realized that the dreaded difficulty of the 1985 publication did not hold up with hindsight. “Basically there are four out of five things you have to do and you will win this game every time,” said Trudgen.
That was fine in 1985, but it wasn’t going to last today, so the team turned to modern titles for inspiration. There is a little Faster than light a bit in the map and UI presentation Darkest dungeon with the characters. The inventory, which becomes a nifty source of thematic tension, is inspired by Resident Evil 4. You will even see a little Octopath traveler in the attractive graphics of the game.
The Apple Arcade version also differs very significantly from the original: It is not intended for children.
“Some of the previous versions of Gameloft were aimed at younger audiences,” said Trudgen. “We didn’t want to do one for a younger audience. We wanted one for the players of [the 1985] The Oregon Trail. “
That’s not to say the new game is too complex for younger players. Still, the game’s audience differs from the original. It’s a game for fans who want to regain the feel of the original, as well as for newbies who know the memes but have never played them.
It remains to be seen whether the new title will be an isolated case or whether it will lead to renewed interest in the potential of the franchise. Still, it’s a fitting tribute to the game’s 50-year history. Despite lots of gameplay updates, new modes, and a graphical overhaul, the core hook is the same. The Oregon Trail is a narrative game about making difficult decisions in order to survive – and it’s just as exciting today as it was fifty years ago.
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