In the Oregon Trail you play the part of a band of pioneers heading west from a town called Independance with your final destination in Oregon city itself. Stock up on supplies and things before you set off and stay alive on the trail by trading, wits and taking chances. There’s plenty of things to keep you busy from rivercrossings to snakebites which can kill members of your party.
There are several difficulty settings but the only thing that changes (as far as I know) is your starting capital, a farmer hasn’t got much to spend compared to a banker. The first town is the cheapest to get supplies so try and stock up as much as you need here. Oxen, parts for your wagon, food, bullets and clothing can all be taken along not just as necessities but also as trading goods for travelers and guides. The basic game has you simply traveling across the lands and occasionally you come across spots which require some interaction. A river has to be crossed and it will show how deep it is so you can make a decision to drive through or float you wagon across. Make the wrong decision and you will likely lose equipment but in the worst case lose a family member! Sometimes the game can be really cruel and a family member dies for whatever reason, you will see a carved out tombstone but you’ll have to continue on.
There’s plenty of other dangers which you don’t really have much influence over like snake attacks and people getting sick. You can help by travelling at a slower pace, eating proper meals or resting once in a while so they can recover but ofcourse you will need more food to sustain everyone. Food can be bought in towns along the trail but if you have bullets you can go hunting yourself and shooting animals is a much cheaper way to get food. The hunting is a bit of a minigame where you can shoot game like rabbits, beavers but also bigger ones like deer which give you a lot of meat. Ofcourse you can always trade with other travelers for items you need as well. Never forget to get some free advice whenever you are in town as you never know what is coming next.
The Oregon trail is a very old game at hart with it roots dating back to the early 70s but the more mainstream version were released in the 10-15 years later. It’s strangly enjoyable traveling in a wagon from east to west but I doubt the actual pioneers felt that way because you can’t really feel the harshness by sitting behind a computer screen. I can really recommend this game dispite the unsual gamestyle.
Overal rating: 8/10
This game was released for several different systems here are some notes:
| C64 | Released in ?. This is a very old version, when shooting you have to type in things like BLAM and BOOM and when mistyping or type too slow you can’t catch anything. It’s textbased as well. |
| DOS | Released in 1990. Because this is a later version it has graphics and in the hunting minigame you can control where you fire your gun and such. |
| Others | These versions are not available. Apple released in 1985. Atari 8-bit released in 1982. Windows released in 1993/1997. |
| Date added | Jun-19-2009 14:41 |
| Name | Oregon trail, the |
| Developer | Mecc |
| Publisher | Mecc |
| First released | 1982 |
| Genre | Misc |
