The Oregon Trail (computer game)

From Freepedia

Image:OregonTrailScreenshot.JPG The Oregon Trail is an educational/edutainment computer game about American pioneer life that has a long history. The game was inspired by the real-life Oregon Trail and was designed to teach schoolchildren about the realities of 19th century pioneer life on the trail.

History

The first version of the game was made in 1971 and was designed for the teletype machines operating at Carleton College. One of the original developers, Don Rawitsch, later began working at the state-funded Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) in 1974, where he introduced the game. Oregon Trail was distributed through the consortium to educational institutions. It became a very common program for Apple computers in public schools during the 1980s and 1990s. Later versions were distributed by Brøderbund after MECC was sold to The Learning Company.

Overview

Players start out at the beginning of the trail, in Independence, Missouri, where they select a profession for their character from a number of choices such as banker, carpenter, or farmer. Each profession has different advantages and drawbacks, such as starting money, end game point bonuses, and special circumstances; for example, sick or injured characters are less likely to die with a Doctor party, and the starting money is relatively high, but the end game point multiplier is low when compared to a more challenging starting party. Players then buy equipment, oxen, and food for the journey.

Along the way, numerous events can occur. Friendly or hostile Indians might be encountered; a member of the family might fall ill or die of a snakebite; rivers must be forded or ferried; wagon parts might break; and so forth. Players usually have several different choices of how to deal with each situation. The wrong choice may cause the player to lose oxen or rations, and possible death could result for members of the caravan. Although it is a children's video game, it is by no means sugar-coated; death and disease are common occurrences, and hunting for food features the player moving around a relatively open field armed with a rifle and shooting at wildlife. Periodically, the wagon train stops at outposts along the journey, where goods might be purchased at ever-increasing prices, and where players can learn historical facts about each location. At any point between outposts and landmarks, players can rest, trade with passing travellers and natives, or hunt; though excessive hunting in one area leads to scarcity of wildlife.

The game is also notorious for the ability to create custom inscriptions on the tombstones of deceased party members; this was often abused by schoolchildren to display swear words, insults or puns. Perhaps the most visible example of this is a tombstone found in most copies of the ROM available for download: the tombstone reads "Here lies andy; peperony and chease". An email sent to a gaming website claims that this is the result of a schoolboy (going by the name of "Andy") who was inspired by advertisements for "Tombstone Pizza", whose game was saved to a disk which later became the popular ROM image.

At the end of the journey, points are awarded according to a formula weighted by the profession chosen, the number and health of surviving family members, remaining possessions, and cash on hand. The current verified world record final score is 47,350 points by MW Lin.