{"id":2428,"date":"2013-04-21T08:51:18","date_gmt":"2013-04-21T08:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/?p=2428"},"modified":"2019-06-11T22:11:31","modified_gmt":"2019-06-11T22:11:31","slug":"the-oregon-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2013\/04\/21\/the-oregon-trail\/","title":{"rendered":"The Oregon Trail"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2011, Universe<\/em>\u00a0published the ghoulishly-titled book\u00a01001 Games You Must Play Before You Die<\/a><\/em>[1]<\/sup><\/a>. The obvious question then follows, “Well, what’s number one?” The list’s ordered chronologically, but even so, it’s a game called\u00a0The Oregon Trail<\/i><\/b>. It’s from the mid 70’s. Today that makes it\u00a0vintage<\/a>, ten years ago it was\u00a0old school<\/a>, and ten years before I’d guess it was\u00a0old fashion<\/a>\u00a0or whatever people said\u00a0back then<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oregon Trail<\/em>\u00a0was first made c.1971 by a trio of student teachers working out of\u00a0Cerleton College<\/a>, wanting to make a game that would help teach kids about the\u00a0Oregon Trail<\/a>\u00a0– a culturally emphasized trail that followed an east-west trajectory on the north American continent during the mid 19th century. The game migrated over to the\u00a0Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium<\/a>\u00a0a few years\u00a0later<\/a>, and was adapted various times to work on\u00a0Apple II<\/a>computers throughout the late ’70s to early ’80s. Since then it’s been adapted for windows, and given a few updates. Most significantly, for contemporary readers:\u00a0the game was remade for\u00a0Facebook<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0earlier this year!<\/p>\n

The past is a foreign country, they play games differently there.\u00a0The classic\u00a0Oregon Trail<\/em>\u00a0was played off a\u00a05\u00bc disk on an\u00a0Apple II<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen 5\u00bc” floppy disks, and I’ve got confused memories of the computers that used them. My school still hoarded a few well into the ’90s, perhaps figuring that the young ones didn’t need anything better. I can remember a writing program and instructions on how to use it: Put the disk with your name into the computer – the story you were writing came up on screen, ready to be continued from last week – if you want to add a picture, change the disk to the “Pictures” disk, choose a picture, and then put the first disk back in. Some computers had space for two disks, and you could add pictures without changing disks.<\/p>\n

Skip forward to today: Go onto google and download the Apple II emulator\u00a0AppleWin<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Oregon Trail<\/em>\u00a0ROM<\/a>, then play.<\/p>\n

I suspect something’s been lost in translation.<\/p>\n

The game sets the player as an ambiguously-detailed American sojourner who wishes to take their family over to Oregon. To start off, the player chooses whether to be a banker, a carpenter, or a farmer, each of which starts the game with differing amounts of cash, thus illustrating the understudied\u00a0correlation<\/a>\u00a0between socioeconomics and rates of dysentery.<\/p>\n

After choosing names for his family the vagabond hero goes shopping with the currency he presumably acquired from selling his failing banking\/carpeting\/farming business. The player chooses how many oxen, caravan bits, food, and such, to carry and then\u00a0heads off<\/a>\u00a0west<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The game is spent either travelling – in which case an animation of a caravan plays – or, well, not travelling. Everything is done on a keyboard, and most of that is by pressing numbers to indicate a choice. So when for instance, the nomadic family reach a fort and take a break, a series of options present themselves: Press 8 to trade, press 6 to get rest some, or press 1 to get the hell out of town before your family become accustomed to the place and start nagging you to just settle down here and forget all about the west coast, because why would you presume that life will be any better there, and aren’t you just\u00a0running away<\/a>\u00a0from yourself?<\/p>\n

When travelling, that is, while watching an animation of a rolling caravan, your food stocks go down, and from time to time you’ll be interrupted by a message telling you (without judging you) that your wife’s arm is broken, or that you’re lost, or that something needs fixing. Additionally, you can stop to check out the lay of the land, during which you can choose to speed up, change your family’s rations, or go hunting. Hunting, presumably, was included not only to simulate the desperate nature of those who took to the trail, but also to provide a\u00a0break<\/a>\u00a0from the monotony of travel and mysterious injuries. Pixelated-you walks around a pixelated background and shoots pixelated animals that sprint across the screen. Obviously, it’s a matter of contrast, but it’s actually pretty fun.<\/p>\n

Eventually, you get to the other side of America and all is finally well. There’s no proper epilogue, cause apparently it really was all about the journey. Having said that, the game\u00a0scores the player<\/a>, attributing points to the ratio of the number of family members who leave the east coast and arrive at the west coast, or how much food you still have.<\/p>\n

This highlights the final lesson of\u00a0Oregon Trail<\/em>: the difference between loss and victory is slighted by the realisation that, for those who know they could do better,\u00a0success is an illusion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n


\nMiscellaneous final words:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why are Americans so interested in the Oregon Trail? Australian’s, by comparison, have the\u00a0Burke and Wills expedition<\/a>, but don’t seem to have fixated on it to the same degree. I suspect that Yanks pride themselves on their continent’s early (European) frontier culture, whereas Aussies still aren’t sure whether to\u00a0claim<\/a>\u00a0settlement history for themselves (qua convicts) or the Brits.<\/p>\n

To elaborate on the ambitiously-named-CaptainSuperBoy<\/a>‘s node: Word on the street suggests that some guy named Andy is responsible for the\u00a0pepperoni and cheese<\/a>\u00a0tombstone, making reference to an ad by\u00a0Tombstone Pizza<\/em>\u00a0reading “What do you want on\u00a0your<\/strong>\u00a0tombstone?” Due to how well known this joke is, I suspect that either pepperoni cheese was a proto-meme<\/a>, imitated by hundreds, or else that it’s some sort of\u00a0Easter Egg<\/a>\u00a0joke, already written into the main program. I can’t tell. See especially\u00a0here<\/a>, but note that a few variant (mis)spellings are quoted around the net.<\/p>\n

References<\/strong>: Wikipedia. But\u00a0Achewood<\/a>‘s better:\u00a01<\/a>\/2<\/a>\/3<\/a>\/4<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Insofar as I can tell, this is in imitation, rather than in relation, to the other hoards of\u00a01001…Before You Die<\/em>\u00a0books.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2011, Universe\u00a0published the ghoulishly-titled book\u00a01001 Games You Must Play Before You Die[1]. The obvious question then follows, “Well, what’s number one?” The list’s ordered chronologically, but even so, it’s a game called\u00a0The Oregon Trail. It’s from the mid 70’s. Today that makes it\u00a0vintage, ten years ago it was\u00a0old school, and ten years before I’d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[159,198,103,204],"tags":[],"metadata":[158],"class_list":["post-2428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-book-review","category-essay","category-everything2","metadata-shai_footnotes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1738,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2010\/12\/03\/nobody-move-br-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":2428,"position":0},"title":"Nobody Move (BR)","author":"Pala","date":"December 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Nobody Move\u00a0is a novel written by\u00a0Denis Johnson. Beginning in July 2008,\u00a0Nobody Move\u00a0appeared as a four-part serialized novel in\u00a0Playboy\u00a0before being published in book form in 2009. Incidentally, that veritable\u00a0literary\u00a0journal does a fine job summarising the story: It maps a colliding and eliding of characters and agendas: a hapless gambler and sometimes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2390,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2011\/05\/03\/whatever-happened-to-the-man-of-tomorrow-br-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":2428,"position":1},"title":"Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? (BR)","author":"Pala","date":"May 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: This Book Review was found as a 'draft' entry in Everything2. It was last updated on 03\/05\/2011. Away in the big city, people still sometimes glance up hopefully from the sidewalks, glimpsing a distant speck in the sky... but no: it's only a bird, only a plane. Superman\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1733,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2010\/12\/01\/antikythera-mechanism-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":2428,"position":2},"title":"Antikythera mechanism","author":"Pala","date":"December 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"In a nutshell, the Antikythera Mechanism is the thing that should not be. It is a mechanical artifact discovered around\u00a0a hundred years ago\u00a0at the bottom of the ocean, dated to about a hundred years before the common era, and which uses gears and other impossibilities to predict astronomical phenomenon and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":39995,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2011\/03\/20\/fortunes-light-tng-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":2428,"position":3},"title":"Fortune’s Light (TNG)","author":"pastfarpoint","date":"March 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Fortune's Light is the 15th numbered TNG novel, written by the now well established Star Trek author Michael Friedman. Riker gets a message regarding an old friend who it seems has stolen a politically-significant artefact from the planet Imprima. The minor plot thread sees Data running a holodeck program of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Detail from \"Fortune's Light\" cover","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/fortunes-light-cover.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1708,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2010\/10\/18\/speusippus-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":2428,"position":4},"title":"Speusippus","author":"Pala","date":"October 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I recommend reading the first footnote before starting It started with\u00a0Plato, but it didn't end there[1]. This fact isn't often discussed. Plato lived in\u00a0Athens\u00a0in\u00a0Ancient Greece\u00a0about 2400 years ago. He himself studied informally under\u00a0Socrates, and Plato, in turn, had his own students and disciples at a school (of sorts) called\u00a0The Academy.[2]\u00a0The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1637,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2004\/10\/25\/the-drowned-and-the-saved-br\/","url_meta":{"origin":2428,"position":5},"title":"The Drowned and the Saved (BR)","author":"meanwhile","date":"October 25, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: This is Shai\u2019s entry into the domain of digital publishing as he contributes an article in the\u00a0Gaia Online Writers Forum. Shai was not only a prolific writer but also an avid reader and it is thus fitting that his first digital post is a book review, the first\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/padotI-Da","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2428"},{"taxonomy":"metadata","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/metadata?post=2428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}