[HN Gopher] How You Wound Up Playing 'The Oregon Trail' in Compu...
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How You Wound Up Playing 'The Oregon Trail' in Computer Class
(2016)
Author : NotSwift
Score : 134 points
Date : 2021-07-18 06:57 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| ddingus wrote:
| From the article:
|
| Forty-five years after Rawitsch, Heinemann, and Dillenberger sat
| down and created the original game in two weeks, The Oregon Trail
| is still a cultural landmark for any school kid who came of age
| in the 1980s or after. Even now, there remains a constant
| pressure to revive the series, so that nostalgic Gen Xers and
| Millennials can amble westward with a dysentery-riddled party
| once again.
|
| ...well, I've got a nice Apple computer setup and ready to
| entertain and educate some young people in my life. They like the
| machine. These programs still work as intended.
|
| For me, it's surreal to hear those sounds, see those sights and
| watch them process the experiences. Recommended, if you've got a
| little space and time. Doing this kind of thing is going to get
| increasingly expensive from here though.
|
| Interestingly, one 5 year old has already noted the CRT. "Papa, I
| want to play some games on that TV."
|
| Of course! Might as well let her experience the CRT. I think they
| are cool. Many of us do, and it's going to be an increasingly
| rare treat. Why not?
| cout wrote:
| Do you have any recommendations for a game for children who
| cannot yet read? My 3yo loves Putt Putt (we play the Steam
| version) because the car talks to him. But in the early 80s
| computers did not yet have speech synthesis or enough storage
| for audio. I would love for him to enjoy Oregon Trail some day,
| but I don't think he's ready for it. Did MECC make any games
| targeted at younger children?
| sp332 wrote:
| This might be overkill, but here's a MECC catalog for 1984-5.
| https://archive.org/details/MECCEducationalComputingCatalog8.
| ..
| Alex3917 wrote:
| There is a Peppa Pig game for consoles and Windows coming out
| on Oct. 22nd. If it ends up being good, that might be the
| first game I try to play with my 3-year-old.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| If we're sticking with nostalgiaware, these were hands down
| my favorite games when I was a toddler.
|
| https://www.myabandonware.com/game/fisher-price-little-
| peopl... https://www.myabandonware.com/game/fisher-price-
| school-bus-d...
| ddingus wrote:
| I do not, but will look. I will say, back in the 80's someone
| asked me that and owned an Atari 800 XL and so did I.
|
| I took a weekend and made this big BASIC program that did
| something cool for everything they did. Press one key and a
| smile face. Press another, and the colors change, etc... And
| some were random, like a set of lines drawn differently each
| time, or a big smile and a little one.
|
| The little guy loved it. Would press the keys, watch, and
| repeat.
|
| Later I found his Dad sitting with him, saying the letter of
| each key while responding to the action.
|
| I did not introduce old computing, until the one I am raising
| got some basic skill. She is doing letters, numbers and can
| use a joystick. She asked.
|
| Surprisingly, she loves to play Drol! Weird, but pretty game.
| It has clear, cute graphics and so there you go. She is 5,
| and became aware enough to play with me later in her 4th
| year.
|
| Before that, I loved watching her play touch games on an
| iPad. Sadly, I do not have it handy and can't remember the
| name, but it has shapes one can drag into matching color
| holes. Anything like that works at 3.
|
| At 4, I also did ABC Mouse and she loves it. Bought a year.
| She will ask for mouse and do it for a few hours at a time. I
| may buy another.
|
| I was going to wait on the Apple, but she saw me using it and
| asked. (I am making a retro assembly language game and doing
| some electronics with that old computer for fun)
|
| I brought up a few games on the Total Replay and she seems to
| really like that computer. It was unexpected. So, I decided
| to get some MECC stuff setup and will probably have her write
| programs as soon as she can handle it.
|
| Another friend grew up with the Color Computer and has kids a
| few years older and expressed interest when I shared these
| experiences. I have a nice one all setup, and it is going to
| their house to see if the same thing happens. I will just not
| have the time for it. I want to, because sweet 6809... maybe
| his kids will jam on that machine and love it more than the
| box it is in does.
|
| We think some young people will get that spark same as we
| did, so why not give them a go on the old machines when it's
| fun?
| aspaceman wrote:
| I remember being 2 years old and first banging my head
| against a VCR. I really wanted to get Toy Story working
| again.
|
| Even if they can't read, a lot of educational games w/
| reading can still be interesting. The bright lights and
| colors encourage exploration and discovery, and when you
| figure out what the game is trying to say (even if you only
| know a couple words) it's an epiphany.
|
| Just let them play around in Putt-Putt without your
| supervision. Or Spy Fox / Lemonade Stand. Zoo Tycoon is also
| a really good one. They all require reading, but a kid can
| just bang themselves against it and learn on their own. (If
| you leave the room).
| ourmandave wrote:
| If you want the nostalgia you can find all the music (and
| gameplay) on youtube for nearly every version.
| bredren wrote:
| Too bad the game did not include the state name's pronunciation,
| which is regularly mangled from the mid-west to east coast.
|
| https://www.wikihow.com/Pronounce-Oregon
| eplanit wrote:
| It's like how Nevada residents _insist_ on the incorrect
| pronunciation of the name of their state[1]. I go with the
| "when in Rome..." philosophy -- I say it wrong when I'm there,
| too.
|
| [1] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/618644/youre-probably-
| pr...
| reaperducer wrote:
| It is correct because it is codified. The State of Nevada
| once had a very detailed web page explaining why the hard A
| is correct. In some state documents, you will even see it
| written Nevada. (iOS doesn't seem to have the proper glyph.)
|
| Meanwhile, both Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and Los Angeles,
| California each have four correct pronunciations.
|
| (I prefer the "Los Angeleez" variation because that is what I
| first heard on KHJ.)
| throwawaycuriou wrote:
| It wasn't until flying into Seattle that this east coaster
| learned of oreGONN. Which is surprising because I'd always
| pronounce the game title that way. In any other context I'd say
| oreg'n. In general east coasters lean on the 'schwa' much more.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa
| darepublic wrote:
| As a kid growing up in the 90s we did play alot of Carmen
| sandiego, Oregon trail, number munchers and math blaster. On mac
| there was also kid pix. And there was a game where you dropped a
| stick figure from a helicopter into a horse drawn cart (stunt
| copter)
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| Is there a good inventory / overview of all the educational games
| from that era?
|
| I played a bunch of different games in 1989/1990 that I only
| vaguely remember today .. would be wild to see them again just
| for the nostalgia trip.
| sp332 wrote:
| Less thorough, but maybe more nostalgia, you can load a bunch
| of these and play them in your browser now.
| https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary
| pmh wrote:
| https://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/educational/ might be a
| good start
| bemmu wrote:
| Our favorite on the C64 in Finland was a game where you flew a
| helicopter on a world map and had to find different countries
| by name. Not sure what the name of that game is.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Hahaha, I was just playing that game a couple months ago for
| the first time. It was pretty fun tbh. It's somewhere on
| Gamebase. Maybe in these results.
|
| http://www.gamebase64.com/search.php?d=45&h=1&adv_game_name_.
| ..
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Growing up in the UK, I hadn't even heard of Oregon. But we had
| more culturally relevant games to play. In my school we played
| Drug Wars...
| joshuaissac wrote:
| In the mid 2000s, there were also J2ME/JAR versions of Drug
| Wars that students would install on their feature phones.
| fouc wrote:
| on BBS?
| batch12 wrote:
| Could also be the version that ran on the TI graphing
| calculators.
| devteambravo wrote:
| My 1st exposure to programming =) (Also snake, lunar
| lander, and the ASM games the cable guy had!)
| ravenstine wrote:
| Does Gen Z have its own "The Oregon Trail" game in the cultural
| sense?
| dmix wrote:
| Minecraft probably, just based on all the very popular young
| livestreamers that grew from that.
| pomian wrote:
| Minecraft!
| [deleted]
| krapp wrote:
| I don't think it's possible for a game to fill the same
| cultural niche now as when games were a relative novelty.
|
| Maybe something like Minecraft or Roblox?
| II2II wrote:
| In terms of educational software, it's doubtful. I was teaching
| in an elementary computer classroom around 2010 and my
| recollection of the software landscape is of remakes of 1980's
| software, some uninspired (though otherwise good) software
| designed for secondary students, and utter garbage that didn't
| deserve the designation edutainment. The stuff I am describing
| as garbage was pretty much a game with interludes of learning,
| which is contrary to what MECC set out to do. While that model
| may be fine for parents buying a game for their own children,
| it isn't very useful in schools.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| This brings back the memories. The Oregon trail game is how I
| even learned what dysentery was! The other game I loved as a kid
| in school was number munchers. That was my jam.
| 0898 wrote:
| Granny's Garden. Anyone?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Yes, I think it was ubiquitous in the UK and have assumed that
| Oregon Trail was similarly positioned culturally - though of
| course GG had no external factual basis to it (that I recall).
|
| Did you play L-Adventure too?
|
| (They're both available online IIRC).
| suicas wrote:
| Yes! I was about to post about this. One of my earliest game
| memories at school.
| techbrobane wrote:
| related: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/08/rotten-stem-
| how-t...
| elliekelly wrote:
| > All MECC games had to do four things, says Rawitsch. First, the
| information based on real events had to be historically accurate.
| Second, learning couldn't be spread out in patches; it had to be
| woven throughout the game start to finish. Third, it had to
| include thorough documentation for the teachers to use it as a
| teaching aid. And fourth, the games had to be fun.
|
| I wonder how many games today could check all four of these
| boxes?
| totalZero wrote:
| Assassin's Creed comes to mind.
|
| https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/09/18/new-tool-in-history-c...
| karaterobot wrote:
| I see that you're talking about the Discovery mode in some of
| the recent games, where you don't interact with the plot at
| all, but can wander around and look at all the models. That's
| very cool!
|
| To be clear though, those games are in general _not_
| historically accurate. I mean, about the only thing they got
| right about Pope Alexander VI is that he had an alien mind
| control staff and he was involved in a battle with cloned
| assassins inside the Vatican. But other than that, there were
| a numerous historical inaccuracies...
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| _Oregon Trail_ , _Lemonade Stand_ , and _Where in the World is
| Carmen San Diego_ were basically my holy trinity of educational
| games. The other educational game I remember, which was probably
| far more important than the three of these put together was some
| random typing game. I had a keyboarding speed of around 80wpm
| before I hit high school from playing that one.
|
| BTW, you can still play them here:
|
| * https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_The_1990
|
| * https://archive.org/details/msdos_Lemonade_Stand_1999
|
| * https://classicreload.com/where-in-the-world-is-carmen-sandi...
| nickjj wrote:
| There was also Solomon's Key
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon%27s_Key.
|
| Breaking down problems and solving real time puzzles was
| educational in its own way.
| furgooswft13 wrote:
| Oh God, that game. Ugh, the music of the NES version is
| permanently seared into my mind.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The Learning Company stuff absolutely boosted my vocabulary
| (and ability to solve word puzzles).
|
| Treasure Mountain - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tTrNVwAKtLk
|
| Treasure Cove - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jF5s9_GFQPI
|
| And a few more random memories:
|
| The Incredible Machine -
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pTbSMKGQ_rU
|
| Pirates! Gold - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3BRS331lGc0
|
| Battle Bugs - I guess what would now be RTS? But with a lot of
| tactical / positioning elements. So really typical 90s "trying
| to figure this new type of game out" -
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HKGHlL5jySU&t=8m17s
| darepublic wrote:
| Ancient empires was my favourite of the learning company
| titles. Had a soundtrack of chiptune classic songs including
| a gnossiene by Erik Satie that I first encountered in this
| educational dos game
| sp332 wrote:
| You can play these in your browser now, although there's no
| guarantee how well they will work. Leave a review! The
| emulator settings can be tweaked individually for these, and
| the emulator software itself is getting updated all the time,
| so it helps the admins and devs know what to focus on.
|
| Treasure Mountain https://archive.org/details/msdos_Super_Sol
| vers_Treasure_Mou...
|
| Treasure Cove https://archive.org/details/msdos_Super_Solvers
| _Treasure_Cov...
|
| The Incredible Machine
| https://archive.org/details/the_incredible_machine_1992
|
| Pirates! Gold
| https://archive.org/details/msdos_Pirates_Gold_1993
|
| Battle Bugs
| https://archive.org/details/msdos_Battle_Bugs_1994
| mambodog wrote:
| if you prefer the macintosh version:
| https://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/mecc/oregon-trail.html
| cproctor wrote:
| I recently translated the original 1971 Oregon Trail BASIC
| source code into Ink (https://unfold.studio/stories/10782/). It
| was my first time working with GOTO statements and hopefully my
| last.
| geitir wrote:
| The game that taught me typing was trying to respond quickly to
| trolls in WoW
| ethbr0 wrote:
| IRC
|
| My typing speed tripled.
| mkmk wrote:
| How about Number Munchers?
| analognoise wrote:
| Number Munchers was the SHIIIIT! Thanks for the flashback!
| homero wrote:
| I played the very old SimCity
| liveoneggs wrote:
| Carmen San Diego was just so good
| throwawaycuriou wrote:
| Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing? I remember an Amiga version which
| had a mode where had a crude visualization of racing other cars
| as you typed.
| samatman wrote:
| That was the one for me, PC AT version but it had the racing
| game as well.
|
| Tied with Turbo Pascal for best lifetime payoff on an EXE
| running on that computer.
|
| Commander Keen has to get the ribbon for hours spent, though,
| unless it was Empire (hat tip to Walter Bright!)
| dawnerd wrote:
| We had to do weekly sessions in Mavis all the way through
| middle school. I checked a couple years ago and they were
| still around.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Civilization. Nothing taught me more history, hands down.
|
| Bunch of leaders to read about, bunch of civs, techs, cities,
| wonders.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Not to mention the tradeoffs of different government types.
| hereforphone wrote:
| A lot of the differences between _____ types in this game
| were based on the opinions of the authors.
| Cd00d wrote:
| I once tried to make a socialist paradise in SimCity, but
| the game moved all my town's people out due to high
| taxes.
| memco wrote:
| There was recently a story here about sim city that
| discussed some of these limitations:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27593081. If you
| search for sim city on HN you'll find several more. In
| addition to emergent functionality that we don't foresee
| when we create a program there's this other side of
| impossible functionality that we also embed in the design
| that we sometimes don't realize.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| In Civilization, implementing Democracy reduces
| governmental corruption in all cities by 100%. It will
| more than double your GDP unless you were already a
| Republic.
|
| It is not possible to be competitive in research
| production unless you are a Republic or a Democracy,
| which is an interesting interpretation of classical
| history.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The difference between zero and history-with-bias is more
| important than the difference to neutral-bias, which a
| kid probably wouldn't be equipped to unpack the nuance of
| anyway.
| jerf wrote:
| Honestly, just the idea that _there are tradeoffs_ is a
| lesson worth teaching. That 's a lesson plenty of people
| haven't learned.
| teawrecks wrote:
| Zoombinis was set theory for kids
| m000 wrote:
| That retro-ad of MECC with the child-pageant-queen-looking girl
| dragging her (male) teacher on a cart is pure cringe.
| pram wrote:
| The cringe is coming from inside your brain.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > child-pageant-queen-looking girl
|
| No, that's just contemporary girl dreased for school with
| typical levels of advertising gloss. Child pageant queen look
| is ... quite different.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| It looked to me like normal advertising copy where they pose
| the models and have them make unnatural, excessive emotions
| to clarify the setup when it's in a magazine, billboard far
| away, or for bad eyesight.
|
| Only American-born individuals born after 1990 automatically
| jump to catastrophize unnatural conclusions because of mass
| media programming and their own internalization of
| puritanical, victimology beliefs (independent of political
| ones).
| m000 wrote:
| Or... how a child pageant queen would look in a casual
| attire.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| So, a child.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| Yeah, that ad is way to creepy. It needs a rainbow dildo monkey
| to bring it up to modern standards.
| donatj wrote:
| I work in educational software, in Minnesota, and have actually
| worked with a number of former MECC employees over the years.
| They have some fascinating stories. It's a small world. Currently
| our head of DevOPs actually worked on Oregon Trail, though a
| later version.
| frabjoused wrote:
| Wow, Number Munchers and Oregon Trail, spot on. Tack on Mavis
| Beacon 5, Carmen San Diego and Jump Start and we're home.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| Anybody else who grew up playing Carmen San Diego now into
| GeoGuessr? It'd be extra cool if there were an annotated (perhaps
| AI-driven?) version of GeoGuessr that provided clues along the
| way, like "the Cyrillic alphabet is used in these countries",
| "the giant baobab tree is only found in Madagascar", "tiny kei
| cars are usually in Japan", etc.
| tolbish wrote:
| I recall GeoSafari...is that similar?
|
| What really stands out in my memory is the Carmen Sandiego show
| on PBS with the in-house acapella band.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| Not quite - GeoGuessr is an online game that drops you
| somewhere randomly in the world using Google Street View
| imagery. Then you can navigate around, and based on what you
| see, try to guess where in the world you are. More and more
| of it has moved behind a paid subscription, but I believe you
| can still do their Daily Challenge with a free account if you
| want to check it out.
|
| https://www.geoguessr.com
| [deleted]
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| GeoGuessr is fun. It's amazing how good some people are at that
| game.
|
| One weekend I was having trouble sleeping, so decided to check
| out what was streaming on twitch. A group of chess streamers I
| follow was attempting to get a perfect run of 100 in a row. I
| caught the last couple hours of what was a continuous 48 hour
| attempt, and it honestly was one of the most entertaining
| things I've ever watched.
| atarian wrote:
| Oregon Trail was my first FPS. My friends and I always tried to
| hunt as much as possible.
| hereforphone wrote:
| It was overhead right? Not FPS? I may be remembering wrong.
| Kye wrote:
| The hunting parts were FPS. At least on the MS-DOS version.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| The hunting part was FPS
| JimiofEden wrote:
| You are correct, the original version was a little overhead
| 2D arcade game
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7DQrOa70yk#t=2m38s
|
| Other revisions of the game were point and click style,
| closer to a FPS
| bluedino wrote:
| It wasn't sideview or quite a 3/4 view. There were (much)
| later versions that were FPS.
| dekhn wrote:
| I enjoyed the game Taipan a lot more, personally. It tought me to
| buy opium in batavia and sell it in hong kong for huge profits.
| kubb wrote:
| It's interesting that I never played this game or heard of it
| until I was older and had limited time for games. Part of its
| appeal to the American audience will definitely be the historical
| setting that y'all learn about in class, which has great
| significance to you.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| You know, I don't think the history made it popular. You could
| have put in any historical event so long as it was sometimes
| funny and an adventure. The real point was that you got to stop
| doing boring stuff in class and play games for a bit. For me,
| at least - as a child in the mid-to-late 80's, these were kind
| of a novelty. At some point, we had an NES at home - but this
| didn't take away from the novelty.
|
| It was the same with, say, Carmen and her world adventures.
| astura wrote:
| Nah, it's appeal was it was just a really good game (for the
| time). I played Oregon Trail the game before I ever knew what
| the real Oregon Trail was nor did I even know of a place called
| Oregon. I thought that the game was entirely fictional at the
| time.
| danjc wrote:
| For more about the game and its contribution to computer games, I
| highly recommend Jimmy Maher's excellent blog:
| https://www.filfre.net/2011/03/on-the-trail-of-the-oregon-tr...
| [deleted]
| II2II wrote:
| As much as I enjoyed those MECC games, I am much more
| appreciative of how they helped to get computers into schools.
| With computers being found in everything from computer labs to
| regular classrooms, it was usually possible to find a teacher who
| would let me in at lunch or after school to explore programming.
| chaostheory wrote:
| The Oregon Trail reboot is already on Apple Arcade. I still
| prefer the original.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| I went to a private school in SV for K-3 (1983-1986) that had
| Apple //e's (IIe's) with Oregon Trail and LOGO.
|
| The popular (myth?) was that Apple donated computers to public
| schools and some private schools, likely to "get kids hooked
| young." It's plausible, but I don't know if it was true. The
| private school could've afforded to buy them outright.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| Did anyone else play the Voyage of the Mimi games?
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/089443938500300...
| the__alchemist wrote:
| One of the follow-ups, The Yukon Trail, was a brutal lesson in
| knowing who you can trust. For example, there's a proverbial
| shell game, where you discover on your own the game is rigged
| once you start placing higher bets. Or the partner option who was
| no skills, but lots of money - inevitably ends up getting you
| killed.
| jdhn wrote:
| Back in middle school (1998 - 2002), we learned about geology
| through this oil exploration game. It was pretty fun even though
| we had to play it on a 5" floppy using a computer from the 80's
| that somehow still worked. I wonder if anybody else played this
| game, and if so, do you remember what it was called?
| themodelplumber wrote:
| In case C64 or a multi-system publisher: Was it any of these?
|
| http://www.gamebase64.com/search.php?f=0&t=2&s=Oil&b=Go%21&d...
| bluedino wrote:
| Number Munchers was my favorite MECC game.
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