Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone (aka Election Day in the UK).
Recently while sitting on a Manhattan roof and sharing the last and only bottle of Corona Lite with my friend Jess, I did my best to explain the Oregon Trail computer game to her. Neither myself nor her roommate could believe that she had never heard of it. I mean come on! Classic childhood computer memories!
"Oregon Trail wasn't an overly difficult game by any means, but at the same time, it had an aesthetically addictive quality to it. The game was so simple to figure out from the get-go, yet a nearly endless number of combinations of disasters and misfortunes could present themselves as you traversed the trail...."
Do any of you remember playing Oregon Trail? I was always the sad sucker who's child died of dysentery or worse yet, the one who's entire family drowned in the Columbia River due to a capsized raft. Christ, that was some good education times.
9 comments:
My favorite part was when you got to go "hunt"
This is Kathleen, BTW.
The hunt rocked, but I was always crap at it and ended up with a feast of squirrel meat. Damn you buffaloes.
Oh my gosh, I loved that game. We never understood how to pronounce the names of the diseases, though, so thinking back about us saying, "Chaw-ler-uh? I died of Chaw-ler-uh?" makes me laugh really hard.
No one ever wanted to be my partner because I'd ford the streams no matter how deep they were.
I remember three things about the game. 1) I was always a banker. 2) I would always leave in April. 3) I tried to avoid the rivers at all costs. Damn you Snake River!
why was this educational again? I remember spending valuable computer class time playing it instead of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, but I don't remember why they thought we should play it. Especially since what we did was set off in December with no supplies and see how many members we could kill off the fastest. Or maybe it was just too easy for our nerdy-kid class?
Well maybe it taught the historical aspects of families traveling west and also reinforced making the right decisions -- how much food to buy, people to barter with, etc.
It taught me that I was crap at shooting buffalo.
Wait, did you have to use a joystick for this game, or just the arrow keys? Neither of which are ideal tools for accurate shooting.
Arrow keys hence the inaccuracy.
Post a Comment