Watch the creators of retro gaming classic Oregon Trail reminisce in a now-retro video
Aux Features Video Games
Here’s some ridiculous math for you: 2021 marks retro-gaming classic The Oregon Trail’s 50th anniversary. 50th. That’s five decades of killing schoolchildren by way of digital dysentery (incidentally, it’s also probably around a decade longer than most who crossed the actual trail survived). To celebrate, the internet has uncovered some old videos of the game’s creators, Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger, discussing their elementary classroom creation back in 1996 on the eve of the seminal game’s 25th anniversary CD-ROM release. Check them out below for some low-res PC video goodness.
“The Oregon Trail is to the educational software business…what the silent movies were to the movie industry,” one explains during the bonus feature segment, which is about as hokey-sounding as it is fair, if we’re being honest.
A second video segment hints at The Oregon Trail’s “future,” promising even more sound effects, voice actors, and “full theater quality sound” in the years to come. Allow us to remind you these videos are themselves 25 years old, reflecting on a game that came out another 25 years before that. Because, as we all know, time is the hardest trail to travel of them all.
[via BoingBoing]
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8 Comments
There needs to be an educational game that teaches people how to pronounce “Oregon” correctly.
OREGANO. Got it!
Particularly for the people living in Ara Gone.
Yet another reason to post a Teen Titans Go image…
I had no idea this game dated back to 1971. I’m only familiar with the Apple II version from the 80s.
You have died of dysentery.
or being stuck in the grays for eternity. One of the two.
If you have been struck by a wave of nostalgia, or if you just want to write “Here lies Poop” on a tombstone, the internet archive has the MS-DOS 1990s version of the game for anyone to play. https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_The_1990