The Oregon Trail: Difference between revisions
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{{work|wppage=The Oregon Trail (1985 video game)}}
[[File:OregonTrail.png|frame|[[Super Drowning Skills|It's 83 miles to Big Blue River.]] [[Eat the Dog|We got a full team of oxen,]] [[More Dakka|half a box of bullets,]] [[The Wild West|it's 1848,]] [[Awesome Anachronistic Apparel|and we're wearing sunglasses.]] [[The Blues Brothers|Hit it.]]]]
{{quote|''"That's how I learned what it means to be [[Eagle Land|an American]]. To embrace the pioneer spirit, [[Shoot Everything That Moves]], [[River of Insanity|drown my family in a river, and die of starvation somewhere]] in [[Place Worse Than Death|the midwest]]."''|'''1up.com's''' July 4th [http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId{{=}}3160769 Oregon Trail Retrospective]}}
{{quote|''"LITTLE JOHNNY [[Memetic Mutation|has died of dysentery]]."''|'''Flavor text'''}}
If you went to an American public school during the
If you don't, the premise of this [[Edutainment Game]], designed by three student teachers for their history class, is to lead your family across [[The Wild West|the American frontier of the mid-19th century]] to reach the promised land, [[The Other Rainforest|or Oregon]]. The game was originally created by Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger, with the first version appearing back in 1971. Rawitch later got hired by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium. He used his new position to create an improved version of the game in 1974. It later became available in the organization's time-sharing network, where it could be accessed by schools across Minnesota. Further improvements, updates, sequels, etc, have continued appearing over the decades.
The game would start in Independence, Missouri, where the player could select from professions such as carpenter or doctor, which provided bonuses such as improved health or repairs, before purchasing provisions and heading west. On the [[Doomed Expedition|long adventure that followed, the player would learn how to manage dwindling supplies]], decide whether or not to ford rivers or caulk the wagon and try and float across (paying the ferry was for suckers), manage wagon breakdowns, deal with rattlesnake bites, help rid the West of the buffalo scourge, press SPACE BAR to continue, and lose at least three family members to dysentery. After [[Hope Spot|finally arriving at Oregon]], players would abruptly have to [[That One Level|steer their wagon]] down a river, dodging [[Inevitable Waterfall|rocks and rapids]], before reaching [[Earn Your Happy Ending|Willamette Valley]] and the [[A Winner Is You|end of the game]]. There was an option to take a toll road and skip the river-riding segment, but again, for suckers.
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The game was quite popular among both students and faculty: teachers liked it because of the historical aspect and the brain-building challenge of managing the expedition, while students enjoyed shooting everything between the Mississippi and the West Coast while leaving funny tombstones along the trail as the inevitable dysentery-related casualties accrued.
''The Oregon Trail'' was successful enough to spawn four sequels (and that's without counting the text-based version that preceded the beloved Apple II version) and a number of spinoffs, such as ''[[The Amazon Trail]]'' (which had a rather bizarre plotline involving a lot of [[Time Travel]]) and ''The Yukon Trail'' ([[Recycled in Space|recycled IN]] [[Canada, Eh?|CANADA!]]). It remains a cultural icon and a gaming classic which helped raise American dysentery awareness significantly. The cultural counterpart for British and non-Canadian commonwealth countries is the, much worse, ''[[Granny's Garden]]''.
The original is available to play [http://www.virtualapple.org/oregontraildisk.html here] and a newer edition is playable [https://web.archive.org/web/20111221042827/http://play.oregontrail.com/ here]. Other versions for [[Facebook]], iPhones and other mobile phones have been released. Wikivoyage featured an [[wikivoyage:Oregon Trail|itinerary]] to lead the voyager through all of the real places mentioned in the game. And Pressman Toys has released a card game version which reproduces the original game's graphics in all their 4-bit glory!
{{tropelist}}▼
▲{{tropelist}}
* [[Adam Smith Hates Your Guts]]: Prices go up the farther along the trail you go.
** Justified, given that supplies in the harsher wilderness would be harder to come by and cost more.
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* [[Cap]]: Every item has a limit on how many you can carry. In the original: 20 oxen, 50 sets of clothing, 99 boxes of bullets, 3 of each spare wagon part, and 2000 pounds of food. There also is one on hunting: You can only carry back 200 pounds of food per session with multiple people, and 100 pounds of food alone.
* [[Completely Missing the Point]]: The game designer actually made it possible to hunt the buffalo into extinction, as an educational lesson. Didn't stop anybody from doing it, or even make them realize what they had done.
* [[Credits Gag]]: The credits for Oregon Trail 2 contain credits for roles such as:
** "Gaffer,"
** "Only Person at MECC who knows what a Gaffer does,"
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** [[Lampshade Hanging|"Silly Credits Inserts."]]
* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: The father/main character in the iPod version.
{{quote|
'''Father:''' [[Hello, Insert Name Here|[Daughter]]] hates you, [[Hello, Insert Name Here|[Mother]]]. }}
* [[Diabolus Ex Machina]]: The game has a massive hard-on for sending grave misfortunes out of the clear blue, sometimes in such a hurry to kill your party that it forgets what was supposed to do them in (If Hezekiah had a snakebite, why'd he just die from dysentery??).
* [[Dialogue Tree]]
* [[Eat the Dog|Eat The Ox]]: If you go for a while without food, you will get the option to slaughter an ox for meat. From ''Oregon Trail II'' on, if a draft animal dies, it can be butchered for meat.
* [[Edutainment Game]]: Teaches players about the path westward on the Oregon Trail. Iconic among edutainment games in American schools from the 1980s and 1990s.
* [[Everything Trying to Kill You]]: All kinds of diseases and accidents are just trying to kill you and your party.
* [[Fight in The Nude]]: You can lose your whole clothing inventory and your people still appear fully clothed.
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* [[Fridge Logic]]:
** As the [[Freelance Astronauts]] put it:
{{quote|
* [[Gameplay Ally Immortality]]: Averted. In addition to the ubiquitous dysentery, a later game made it possible (and very easy) to accidentally ''shoot'' one of your allies (or yourself) while hunting.
* [[Grave Humor]]: You can leave whatever text you want to on the graves. People who play after you will have the option to read your tombstones when they pass by where you died in-game. So you can guess what kind of crude and obscene messages kids left for each other back in the day. It was so awesome.
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** Combine this with [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]]. Good luck getting to Oregon when a thief comes in the middle of the night and ''steals all of your oxen.'' Strangely, your player [[Gameplay and Story Segregation|doesn't shoot him]] after the third or so attempt.
* [[Macrogame]]
* [[Magic Antidote]]: Half played, half averted - Some stuff like gradually warming frostbitten areas and [[Suck Out the Poison|sucking out snake venom]] will actually work. Heck, ''Peppermint'' actually really helps if you administer it to someone with Cholera. (The menthol actually eases the symptoms and allows the immunity system to fight off the infection)
** Played Straight in the iOS version.
* [[The Millstone]]: In 5 and probably 2, Nicholas J. Tillman is apparently an in-game millstone who cheats at cards and hinders your train as you go up hills. If you speak to him, he also gives horrible advice like rafting the rapids in the Columbia because it will be fun. [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|He also wears bad suits]].
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** There's also [http://www.halolz.com/2009/04/22/mary-died-of-dysentery/ this].
* [[Politically-Correct History]]: In the 5th version, they added cartoon segments throughout the game showing the journey of a boy, a girl, and their [[Black Best Friend]].
* [[Pyrrhic Victory]]: Arrive in Oregon with a sole surviving party member; you made it, but the rest of your family is dead as a result. You yourself may even be sick and dying at this point.
* [[Random Number God]]
* [[River of Insanity]]: '''The. Whole. Game.'''
* [[Role
* [[Scare Chord]]: II (and 5)'s infamous DUN DUN!
* [[Self-Imposed Challenge]]: "Can you kill the WHOLE PARTY before getting to the first fort?" or "Can you get to Oregon with NO DEATHS?"
** The latter is actually more possible in the later games, assuming you're pragmatic when you pick your gear (don't bring the cast-iron stove, it's a dead-weight) and you don't make really stupid decisions (piss off local Native Americans, wait to hunt until you're totally out of food and desperate).
* [[Soundtrack Dissonance]]: As the status of your party got worse and worse, the music would become more and more frantic/depressing, with [[Scare Chord|Scare Chords]] in the soundtrack in poor condition. But strangely, if a sick party member dies and there aren't any more sick people, THE MUSIC RESETS TO THE CHEERFUL SOUNDING MUSIC. Also a form of [[Mood Whiplash]].
* [[Spin-Off]]: There's ''The Yukon Trail'' and ''The Amazon Trail'' mentioned above. And then, you know they want a piece of the [[
* [[Super Drowning Skills]]: If you ford a river that's too deep, your caulked wagon tips over, or (very rarely) your ferry breaks loose from moorings, some of your party members may drown in the river. Likewise when you raft down the Columbia River, and crash into a rock or (in the Apple II version) the shore.
** Sometimes your wagon can tip in ''two feet'' of water.
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* [[Video Game Remake]]: Quite a lot of them; a special note is the fifth edition being largely a remake of the second game, which is literally the exact same game with a couple new mini-games, and they added cartoon segments throughout the game.
** The 3rd Edition is a throwback directly to the 1st game, with fewer options than the second game when you have to make decisions.
** And a fan-made [[Everything's Deader with Zombies|zombie version]], [https://web.archive.org/web/20141102183505/http://hatsproductions.com/organtrail.html Organ Trail].
* [[We Cannot Go on Without You]]: From ''Oregon Trail II'' on; the main character's death ends the game, even if the other party members are still living.
* [[The Wild West]]: The setting.
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{{reflist}}
{{World Video Game Hall of Fame}}
[[Category:IOS Games]]
[[Category:Edutainment Game]]
[[Category:The Seventies]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Apple II]]
[[Category:Atari 8 Bit Computers]]
[[Category:DOS]]
[[Category:TI-99]]
[[Category:Colecovision]]
[[Category:Memetic Works]]
[[Category:Pages with working Wikipedia tabs]]
[[Category:Video Games of the 1970s]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oregon Trail, The}}
[[Category:Video Game]]
[[Category:Older Than the NES]]
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