The Oregon Trail
| The Oregon Trail | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger |
| Publisher | Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium & The Learning Company ( Brøderbund ) |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1971 (school) / 1974 (trade) |
| platform | Mainframe , Apple II , Handy , Nintendo DS , Apple Macintosh , Commodore 64 , MS-DOS , Windows |
| genre | Edutainment |
| Subject | Settlement of the western USA |
| Game mode | Single player |
| medium | CD-ROM , game module , floppy disk , network |
| language | English |
The Oregon Trail is an edutainment - computer game , which was developed by Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger in the 1971st It was distributed from 1974 by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium . The game is based on the Oregon Trail , a settler route over the Rocky Mountains in the 19th century.
Game content
The object of the game is to lead a pioneer trek along the Oregon Trail. In the 1840s to 1860s, tens of thousands of pioneers and settlers moved on this route from the settlement areas on the Missouri River over a distance of around 3,500 km through almost deserted areas into the fertile valleys of the Pacific Northwest , particularly into the valley of the Willamette River in Oregon . The route led over the Great Plains and first wide and flat, then increasingly narrow and raging rivers up into the Rocky Mountains , whose main ridge was usually crossed at the South Pass . From there it went to the Snake River and the Snake River Plain and over the mountains to the Columbia River . He led the treks to Portland , where the road split into the different settlement areas.
The game can be viewed as a mixture of role and strategy game. It is necessary to take care of the supply of the trek so that the pioneers do not starve or die of disease. At the same time, the cruising speed can be regulated in order to arrive in Oregon before winter if possible. However, the higher the speed, the more stressful animals and covered wagons are; In addition, breaks are required for the group to relax. Often the player is faced with the decision to take a risky but faster route or to take a safe detour. Depending on the version of the game, smaller mini-games are built in. In the first versions of the game, the hunt was played out by entering sound words in a prediction game, in later versions you can control a crosshair with the mouse .
The score at the end of the game is determined by the occupation chosen at the beginning, the remaining money, health and the number of survivors and the remaining possessions.
Development history
The first version of the game was developed on a mainframe by three trainee lawyers at Carleton College in Northfield , Minnesota . The idea came from Don Rawitsch, who taught history. Paul Dillenberger and Bill Heinemann taught mathematics and were persuaded by him to take part in the project. On December 3, 1971, the program was shown for the first time in history class at Bryant Junior High School and then made available to students on a computer until the end of the semester. In 1974 Rawitsch was hired by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC), through which the game was distributed to schools in Minnesota.
In 1978 the first version of the game for the Apple II was published in Integer BASIC . A publication under the name Oregon Trail 2 followed in June 1978 by JP O'Malley. In 1980 the game was published on Elementary Volume 6 by MECC under the name Oregon with simple graphics. In 1985 it was published again as a stand-alone title.
Oregon Trail Deluxe , was released for DOS in 1992 , followed by Oregon Trail II in 1996, followed by The Oregon Trail 3rd Edition in 1997 . The 4th and 5th editions followed, distributed by The Learning Company ( Brøderbund ).
In the meantime, the game has also been released on various cell phones and portable consoles.
In February 2011, an official version of the game was launched by Blue Fang for Facebook .
Related games
In 1991 a network version called Wagon Train 1848 was published, in which each player managed their own car on their computer. All players steered the trek together and could support the other players.
MECC published the games The Yukon Trail , The Amazon Trail and in 1997 Africa Trail in 1994 , all of which have a similar game structure but a different background story. The Amazon Trail continued with two more parts.
In 2007, the Thule company released the Thule Trail game as an advertising game that can be played online. In 2008 the band Fall Out Boy followed suit .
The Oregon Trail: American Settler! is a licensed product from Gameloft , which was developed for mobile devices ( iOS and Android ) and has the theme of founding a city according to the trail.
In 2013, The Men Who Wear Many Hats published the game Organ Trail , which is a variant of the game during a zombie apocalypse.
Web links
- Oregon Trail Series at MobyGames (English) (incomplete)
- College of William & Mary website ( February 27, 2011 memento on Internet Archive )
Footnotes
- ↑ City Pages: Oregon Trail: How three Minnesotans forged its path ( Memento of the original from January 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Announces the Release of The Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? for Facebook ( Memento of the original from May 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Thule Trail flash game
- ↑ FallOutBoy Trail flash game ( memento of the original from July 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
