The Oregon Trail is a text-based strategy video game 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 to teach school children about the realities of 19th-century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail. In the game, the player assumes the role of a wagon leader guiding a party of settlers from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon via a covered wagon 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 teleprinters instead of computer monitors. A later Apple II port 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. Despite its popularity with the students, it was deleted from the school district's mainframe computer 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 microcomputers in the 1970s, the MECC released several versions of the game over the next decade for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit computers, and Commodore 64 computers, before redesigning it as a graphical commercial game for the Apple II 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 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 strategy video game in which the player, as the leader of a wagon train, controls a group journeying down the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon, in 1847. The player purchases supplies, then plays through about 12 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 travel, which can increase the rounds needed to reach Oregon.

</references>

  • The 1975 version of The Oregon Trail can be played for free in the browser at the Internet Archive