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''The Oregon Trail'' is a
text-based In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI) (alternately terminal user interfaces, to reflect a dependence upon the properties of computer terminals and not just text), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an ear ...
strategy video game Strategy is a major video game genre that emphasizes thinking and planning over direct instant action in order to achieve victory. Although many types of video games can contain strategic elements, as a genre, strategy games are most commonly defi ...
developed by Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger in 1971 and produced by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) beginning in 1975. It was developed as a
computer game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedback ...
to teach school children about the realities of 19th-century pioneer life on the
Oregon Trail The Oregon Trail was a east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of what is now the state of Kans ...
. In the game, the player assumes the role of a wagon leader guiding a party of
settler A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established a permanent residence there, often to colonize the area. A settler who migrates to an area previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited may be described as a pioneer. Settle ...
s from
Independence, Missouri Independence is the fifth-largest city in Missouri and the county seat of Jackson County, Missouri, Jackson County. Independence is a satellite city of Kansas City, Missouri, and is the largest suburb on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metro ...
, to
Oregon City, Oregon ) , image_skyline = McLoughlin House.jpg , imagesize = , image_caption = The McLoughlin House, est. 1845 , image_flag = , image_seal = Oregon City seal.png , image_map ...
via a
covered wagon The covered wagon or prairie wagon, historically also referred to as an ambulance or prairie schooner, was a vehicle usually made out of wood and canvas that was used for transportation, prominently in 19th-century America. With roots in the he ...
in 1847. Along the way the player must purchase supplies, hunt for food, and make choices on how to proceed along the trail while encountering random events such as storms and wagon breakdowns. The original versions of the game contain no graphics, as they were developed for computers that used
teleprinter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Init ...
s instead of
computer monitor A computer monitor is an output device that displays information in pictorial or textual form. A discrete monitor comprises a visual display, support electronics, power supply, housing, electrical connectors, and external user controls. The ...
s. A later
Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...
port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as H ...
added a graphical shooting minigame. The first version of the game was developed over the course of two weeks for use by Rawitsch in a history unit at Jordan Junior High School in
Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origin ...
. Despite its popularity with the students, it was deleted from the school district's
mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...
at the end of the school semester. Rawitsch recreated the game in 1974 for the MECC, which distributed educational software for free in Minnesota and for sale elsewhere, and recalibrated the probabilities of events based on historical journals and diaries for the game's release the following year. After the rise of
microcomputer A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PC ...
s in the 1970s, the MECC released several versions of the game over the next decade for the
Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...
,
Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, ...
, and
Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness W ...
computers, before redesigning it as a graphical commercial game for the
Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...
under the same name in 1985. The game is the first entry in ''The Oregon Trail'' series; games in the series have since been released in many editions by various developers and publishers, many titled ''The Oregon Trail''. The multiple games in the series are often considered to be iterations on the same title, and have collectively sold over 65 million copies and have been inducted into the
World Video Game Hall of Fame The World Video Game Hall of Fame is an international hall of fame that opened on June 4, 2015. It is located in The National Museum of Play's ''eGameRevolution'' exhibit; the hall's administration is overseen by The Strong and the Internatio ...
. The series has also inspired a number of spinoffs such as '' The Yukon Trail'' and '' The Amazon Trail''.


Gameplay

''The Oregon Trail'' is a
text-based In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI) (alternately terminal user interfaces, to reflect a dependence upon the properties of computer terminals and not just text), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an ear ...
strategy video game Strategy is a major video game genre that emphasizes thinking and planning over direct instant action in order to achieve victory. Although many types of video games can contain strategic elements, as a genre, strategy games are most commonly defi ...
in which the player, as the leader of a wagon train, controls a group journeying down the
Oregon Trail The Oregon Trail was a east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of what is now the state of Kans ...
from
Independence, Missouri Independence is the fifth-largest city in Missouri and the county seat of Jackson County, Missouri, Jackson County. Independence is a satellite city of Kansas City, Missouri, and is the largest suburb on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metro ...
to
Oregon City, Oregon ) , image_skyline = McLoughlin House.jpg , imagesize = , image_caption = The McLoughlin House, est. 1845 , image_flag = , image_seal = Oregon City seal.png , image_map ...
in 1847. The player purchases supplies, then plays through approximately twelve rounds of decision making, each representing two weeks on the trail. Each round begins with the player being told their current distance along the trail and the date, along with their current supplies. Supplies consist of food, bullets, clothing, miscellaneous supplies, and cash, each given as a number. Players are given the option to hunt for food, and in some rounds to stop at a fort to purchase supplies, and then choose how much food to consume that round. The game closes the round by randomly selecting one or two events and weather conditions. The events include storms damaging supplies, wagons breaking down, and attacks by wild animals or "hostile riders"; weather conditions can slow down the rate of travel, which can result in additional rounds needed to reach Oregon. When hunting, or when attacked, the game prompts the player to type a word—"BANG" in the original version, or a randomly selected word like "BANG" or "POW" in later versions—with misspellings resulting in no effect. When hunting, the faster the word is typed, the more food is gathered. The game ends when the player reaches Oregon, or if they die along the trail; death can occur due to an attack or by running out of supplies. Running out of food results in starvation, while lack of clothing in cold weather, low levels of food, or random events such as snakebite or a hunting accident lead to illness; this results in death if the player does not have miscellaneous supplies for minor or regular illnesses, or cannot afford a doctor in the case of serious illnesses.


Development


Original version

In 1971, Don Rawitsch, a history major and senior at
Carleton College Carleton College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota. Founded in 1866, it had 2,105 undergraduate students and 269 faculty members in fall 2016. The 200-acre main campus is between Northfield and the 800-acre Cowlin ...
in
Northfield, Minnesota Northfield is a city in Dakota and Rice counties in the State of Minnesota. It is mostly in Rice County, with a small portion in Dakota County. The population was 20,790 at the 2020 census. History Northfield was platted in 1856 by John W ...
, taught an 8th-grade history class at Jordan Junior High School in
Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origin ...
as a student teacher. His supervising teacher assigned him to prepare a unit on "The Western Expansion of the Mid-19th Century", and Rawitsch decided to create a board game activity about the Oregon Trail for the students. After one week of planning the lessons, he was in the process of drawing out the trail on sheets of paper on the floor of his apartment when his roommates, fellow Carleton students Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger, came in. Heinemann, who along with Dillenberger was a math student and student teacher with experience in programming, discussed the project with Rawitsch, and told him that it would be well-suited to a computer program, as it could keep track of the player's progress and calculate their chances of success based on their supplies instead of a dice roll. Rawitsch was initially hesitant, as the unit needed to be complete within two weeks, but Heinemann and Dillenberger felt it could be done if they worked long hours each day on it. The trio then spent the weekend designing and coding the game on paper. The Minneapolis school district had recently purchased an
HP 2100 The HP 2100 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers that were produced by Hewlett-Packard (HP) from the mid-1960s to early 1990s. Tens of thousands of machines in the series were sold over its twenty-five year lifetime, making HP the fourth largest mi ...
minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ' ...
, and the schools the trio were teaching in, like the other schools in the district, were connected to it via a single
teleprinter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Init ...
. These teleprinters could send and print messages from programs running on the central computer. The
video game industry The video game industry encompasses the development, marketing, and monetization of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide. The video game industry has grown from niches to mainstrea ...
was in its infancy in 1971, and the three had no resources to draw on to develop the game software beyond their own programming knowledge; instead, they spent two weeks working and coding in
HP Time-Shared BASIC HP Time-Shared BASIC (HP TSB) is a BASIC programming language interpreter for Hewlett-Packard's HP 2000 line of minicomputer-based time-sharing computer systems. TSB is historically notable as the platform that released the first public ve ...
on their own. Rawitsch focused on the design and historical portions of the game, while Heinemann and Dillenberger did the programming, working on the teleprinter kept in a small room that was formerly a janitor's closet at the school they taught at, Bryant Junior High School, as well as bringing it to the apartment to continue working. Heinemann focused on the overall programming flow, and came up with the hunting minigame, while Dillenberger made subroutines for the game to use, wrote much of the text displayed to the player, and tested for bugs in the code. As there was only one terminal, Heinemann wrote code on paper while Dillenberger entered it into the system along with his own. They implemented the basics of the game in those two weeks, including purchasing supplies, making choices at specific points of the journey, and the hunting minigame. They also included the random events happening to the player, and Heinemann had the idea to make the random events tied to the geography of the trail, so that cold weather events would be more likely in the mountains and attacks more likely in the plains. They also added small randomization of outcomes such as the amount of food gained from hunting; they expected that in order for the children to be interested in playing the game multiple times there needed to be variations between plays. Prior to the start of Rawitsch's history unit, Heinemann and Dillenberger let some students at their school play it to test; the students were enthusiastic about the game, staying late at school to play. The other teachers were not as interested, but did recommend changes to the game, particularly removing negative depictions of Native Americans as they were based more on
Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...
movies and television than history, and could be problematic towards the several students with Native American ancestry at the schools. ''The Oregon Trail'' debuted to Rawitsch's classes on December 3, 1971. He was unsure how interested the students would be in the game, as they had had limited exposure to computers and several seemed uninterested in history altogether, but after he showed them the game students would line up outside the door for their turn and stay after school for another chance. Rawitsch has recounted that, as only one student could use the teleprinter at one time and he could only reserve it for one week, he had the students play in groups, and they organized themselves into voting for responses and delegating students to handle hunting, following the map, and keeping track of supplies. Other teachers at the school came up with "flimsy excuses" for their students to try the game as well. The trio adjusted the game's code as the students played in response to bugs found, such as purchasing clothes for negative money. As the school district shared a single central minicomputer, schools across the city began to play the game as well. When the semester and their student teaching term ended, the team printed out copies of the
source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the ...
—about 800 lines of code—and deleted the program from the computer.


MECC version

In 1974, Rawitsch was hired by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC), a state-funded organization that developed
educational software Educational software is a term used for any computer software which is made for an educational purpose. It encompasses different ranges from language learning software to classroom management software to reference software. The purpose of all t ...
for the classroom, as an entry-level liaison for local community colleges. The MECC had a similar system to the Minneapolis school district's setup in 1971, with a CDC Cyber 70/73-26
mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...
which schools across the state could connect to via terminals. The system contained several educational programs, and Rawitsch's boss let him know that it was open to submissions. Rawitsch, with permission from Heinemann and Dillenberger, spent the 1974 Thanksgiving weekend copying and adjusting the printed
BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...
source code into the system. Rather than submit the recreated copy, he instead enhanced the game with research on the events of the Oregon Trail that he had not had time for with the original version, and changed the frequency and types of random events, such as bad weather or wagons breaking down, to be based on the actual historical probabilities for what happened to travelers on the trail at each location in the game. Rawitsch calculated the probabilities himself, basing them on historical diaries and narratives of people on the trail that he read. He also added in more positive depictions of Native Americans, as his research indicated that many settlers received assistance from them along the trail. He placed ''The Oregon Trail'' into the organization's time-sharing network in 1975, where it could be accessed by schools across Minnesota.


Legacy

The 1975 mainframe game was the most popular software in the system for Minnesota schools for five years, with thousands of players monthly. Rawitsch, Heinemann, and Dillenberger were not publicly acknowledged as the creators of the original game until 1995, when MECC honored them in a ceremony at the
Mall of America Mall of America (MOA) is a large shopping mall located in Bloomington, Minnesota, United States. Located within the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area, the mall lies southeast of the junction of Interstate 494 and Minnesota State Highway ...
. By then, several versions of the game had been created. Rawitsch published the source code of ''The Oregon Trail'' in ''
Creative Computing ''Creative Computing'' was one of the earliest magazines covering the microcomputer revolution. Published from October 1974 until December 1985, the magazine covered the spectrum of hobbyist/home/personal computing in a more accessible format t ...
''s May–June 1978 issue, along with some of the historical information he had used to refine the statistics. That year MECC began encouraging schools to adopt the
Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...
microcomputer, purchasing large amounts at a discount and reselling them to schools. MECC began converting several of their products to run on microcomputers, and John Cook adapted the game for the Apple II; though the text-based gameplay remained largely the same, he added a display of the player's position along the trail on a map between rounds, and replaced the typing in the hunting and attack minigame with a graphical version in which a deer or attacker moves across the screen and the player presses a key to fire at it. A version for the
Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, ...
, again titled ''The Oregon Trail'', was released in 1982. The Apple II version was included under the name ''Oregon'' as part of MECC's ''Elementary'' series, distributed to Minnesota schools for free and for profit to schools outside of the state, on ''Elementary Volume 6'' in 1980. ''Oregon'' was ported to the
Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness W ...
in 1984 as part of a collection like ''Elementary Volume 6'' titled ''Expeditions''. By the mid-1980s, MECC was selling their educational software to schools around the country, and ''The Oregon Trail'' was their most popular product by far. In 1985, MECC produced a fully-graphical version of the game for Apple II computers, redesigned by R. Philip Bouchard as a greatly expanded product for home consumers under the same name. '' The Oregon Trail'' was extremely successful, and along with successive versions of the game it sold over 65 million copies. Several further games have been released in ''The Oregon Trail'' series, many under the title ''The Oregon Trail'', as well as a number of spinoffs such as '' The Yukon Trail'' and '' The Amazon Trail''. The original ''Oregon Trail'' has been described in ''Serious Games and Edutainment Applications'' as "one of the most famous ancestors" of the
serious game A serious game or applied game is a game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. The "serious" adjective is generally prepended to refer to video games used by industries like defense, education, scientific exploration, he ...
subgenre. The text-based and graphical versions of ''The Oregon Trail'' are often described as different iterations of the same game when discussing the game's legacy; Colin Campbell of ''
Polygon In geometry, a polygon () is a plane figure that is described by a finite number of straight line segments connected to form a closed '' polygonal chain'' (or ''polygonal circuit''). The bounded plane region, the bounding circuit, or the two ...
'', for example, has described it collectively as one of the most successful games of all time, calling it a cultural icon. Kevin Wong of ''
Vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character t ...
'' claimed that the collective game was "synonymous with
edutainment Educational entertainment (also referred to as edutainment) is media designed to educate through entertainment. The term was used as early as 1954 by Walt Disney. Most often it includes content intended to teach but has incidental entertainmen ...
". Due to its widespread popularity, ''The Oregon Trail'', referring to all versions of the game released over 40 years, was inducted into the
World Video Game Hall of Fame The World Video Game Hall of Fame is an international hall of fame that opened on June 4, 2015. It is located in The National Museum of Play's ''eGameRevolution'' exhibit; the hall's administration is overseen by The Strong and the Internatio ...
in 2016.
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
named the game as one of the 100 greatest video games in 2012, and placed it 9th on its list of the 50 best games in 2016.


References


External links


The 1975 version of ''The Oregon Trail''
can be played for free in the browser at the
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oregon Trail 0, The The Oregon Trail (series) 1971 video games 1975 video games Apple II games Children's educational video games Commercial video games with freely available source code Classic Mac OS games History educational video games Mainframe games Survival video games Video games developed in the United States Video games set in the 19th century Video games with textual graphics Western (genre) video games World Video Game Hall of Fame Video games set in the United States