The Oregon Trail (1971)

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About

The Oregon Trail is a computer game originally developed by Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger in 1971 and produced by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) in 1974. The original game was designed to teach school children about the realities of 19th-century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail. The player assumes the role of a wagon leader guiding a party of settlers from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon's Willamette Valley via a covered wagon in 1848.
The game is the first entry in the Oregon Trail series, and has since been released in many editions by various developers and publishers who have acquired rights to it, as well as inspiring a number of spinoffs (such as The Yukon Trail and The Amazon Trail) and the parody/homage The Organ Trail.

Release date
Developer
MECC
,
Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium
Publisher
Gameloft, Brøderbund, The Learning Company
Age rating
Not rated

System requirements for Commodore / Amiga

System requirements for Classic Macintosh

System requirements for Apple II

System requirements for PC

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Last Modified: Oct 6, 2024

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The Oregon Trail (1971) reviews and comments

Fun and short and kind of educational
While the version I grew up with had better graphics (I played a copy of the Apple II port from 1974, the original had no graphics at all), this version still retained the fun of trying to survive the trail. The history aspect is also really interesting, allowing the player to live the history and understand the different context better than a simple text book would. The game-play is very simple, and familiar to people who have played old-school text adventure games. Press Y to indicate yes, press N to indicate no, use numbers to choose from a menu. Simple, yet effective. It’s the scope this game creates in the mind that helps it to surpass such simplicity, which is pretty impressive for a game that is almost 50 years old now.
«Time-tested»
«Constantly dying and enjoy it»
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