The Oregon Trail (series)

The Oregon Trail
Genre(s)	Edutainment
Developer(s)	MECC
Publisher(s)	Broderbund The Learning Company Gameloft
Creator(s)	Don Rawitsch Bill Heinemann Paul Dillenberger
First release	The Oregon Trail December 3, 1971
Latest release	The Oregon Trail April 2, 2021
Spin-offs	The Amazon Trail The Yukon Trail MayaQuest: The Mystery Trail Africa Trail

The Oregon Trail is a series of educational computer games. The first game was originally developed by Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger in 1971 and produced by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) in 1974. The original game was designed to teach eighth grade schoolchildren about the realities of 19th-century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail. The player assumes the role of a wagon leader guiding a party of settlers from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon's Willamette Valley via a covered wagon in 1848.

In 1971, Don Rawitsch, a senior at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, taught an eighth grade history class as a student teacher.^[1][2] Rawitsch recruited two friends and fellow student teachers, Paul Dillenberger and Bill Heinemann, to help with his student-teaching project.^[3] Bill Heinemann used HP Time-Shared BASIC running on an HP 2100 minicomputer to write the original computer program.^[4]

The original core gameplay concepts that have been included in every subsequent version are initial supply purchase, occasional food hunting, occasional supply purchase at forts, inventory management of supplies, variable travel speed depending upon conditions, frequent misfortunes, and game over upon death or successfully reaching Oregon.^[5]

The game that would be later named The Oregon Trail debuted to Rawitsch's class on December 3, 1971. Although the minicomputer's teletype and paper tape terminals that predate display screens were awkward to children, the game was immediately popular, and he made it available to users of the minicomputer time-sharing network owned by Minneapolis Public Schools. When the next semester ended, Rawitsch printed out a copy of the source code and deleted it from the minicomputer.^[5][3]

In 1974, the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC), a state-funded organization that developed educational software for the classroom, hired Rawitsch. He retyped the game from a printout of the 1971 BASIC code into the organization's time-sharing network. Then, he modified the frequency and details of the random events that occurred in the game, to more accurately reflect the accounts he had read in the historical diaries of people who had traveled the trail. In 1975, when his updates were finished, he made the game titled OREGON available to all the schools on the timeshare network. The game became one of the network's most popular programs, with thousands of players monthly.^[5][3][6]

Rawitsch published the source code of The Oregon Trail, written in BASIC 3.1 for the CDC Cyber 70/73-26, in Creative Computing's May–June 1978 issue.^[7] That year, MECC began encouraging schools to adopt the Apple II microcomputer.^[3] John Cook adapted the game for the Apple II, and it appeared on A.P.P.L.E.'s PDS Disk series No. 108. A further version called Oregon Trail 2 was adapted in June 1978 by J.P. O'Malley. The game was further released as part of MECC's Elementary series, on Elementary Volume 6 in 1980. The game was titled simply Oregon, and featured minimal graphics. It proved so popular that it was re-made under the same title, with substantially improved graphics and expanded gameplay, in 1985. The new version was also updated to more accurately reflect the real Oregon Trail, incorporating notable geographic landmarks as well as human non-player characters with whom the player can interact.^[8]

By 1995, The Oregon Trail generated about one-third of MECC's $30 million in annual revenue.^[9] An updated version, Oregon Trail Deluxe, was released for DOS and Macintosh in 1992, as well as Windows in 1993 (under the title of simply The Oregon Trail Version 1.2)^[10] followed by Oregon Trail II in 1995,^[3] The Oregon Trail 3rd Edition in 1997,^[11] and 4th^[12] and 5th editions.^[13] As of 2011^[update], more than 65 million copies of The Oregon Trail have been sold.^[3]

Games in the series were released with varying titles.

The game was popular among American elementary school students from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, as many computers came bundled with the game. MECC followed up on the success of The Oregon Trail with similar titles such as The Yukon Trail and The Amazon Trail.^[20] David H. Ahl published Westward Ho!, set on the Oregon Trail in 1848, as a type-in game in 1986.^[21]

The phrase "You have died of dysentery" has been popularized on T-shirts^[3] and other promotional merchandise.

The game resurfaced in 2008 when Gameloft created an updated version for cell phones.^[22][23][3] A new release for the iPhone and iPod Touch was also available from Gameloft.^[24] The game went live in the iTunes App Store on March 11, 2009.^[25] In 2010, the Palm webOS version was released to the Palm App Catalog on January 7, and Xbox Live version was released on Windows Phone 7 on November 11.

The cell phone version of the game is similar to the original, but varies in that the player can choose one of three different wagons: a basic wagon, a prairie schooner or a Conestoga wagon. The player can also choose to become a banker, a carpenter, or a farmer, each of which has unique benefits. Unlike the computer version of the game, players in the iPhone and iPod Touch version do not need to buy guns and bullets. The game has received a major update, in which the player uses trading and crafting to upgrade their wagon, buy food, and cure ailments. ^{[citation needed]}

In 2011, the 1975 and 1978 BASIC source code versions of the game were reconstructed.^[26]

In February 2011, a new version of the game was released on the social networking site Facebook.^[27] This version was removed from Facebook when Blue Fang Games closed.^[28] A new version of the game was also released for the Wii and 3DS that year, and received a negative critical response.^[29]

In 2012, a parody called Organ Trail was released by the Men Who Wear Many Hats for browsers, iOS, and Android, with the setting changed to human survivors fleeing a zombie apocalypse.^[30]

In 2012, the Willamette Heritage Center (WHC) and the Statesman Journal newspaper in Salem, Oregon created Oregon Trail Live as a live-action event.^[31] Teams competed through ten challenges on the grounds of the WHC. Challenges were based loosely on the game: hunting for game was done by shooting Nerf guns at college students wearing wigs and cloth antlers, while carrying 200 pounds (91 kg) of meat became pulling a 200-pound man up a hill in a child's red wagon while he recited historical meat facts and pointed out choice cuts. Independence, Missouri, was at one end of the grounds, and the Willamette Valley was at the other end. The WHC received the 2014 Outstanding Educator Award from the Oregon-California Trails Association for this event.

In 2014, a parody musical called The Trail to Oregon! was made by the musical theater company StarKid Productions, with several references being made towards the game.^[32]

In 2015, a 5k fun run held in Oregon City (the end of the route of the Oregon Trail) was modeled after the game with choice points along the route.^[33]

Also that year, Pressman Toy Corporation released The Oregon Trail card game based on the video game.^[34]

In 2018, a handheld electronic version of the game was produced by the company Basic Fun. This battery-powered version featured a small TV monitor that replicated the look and sounds of one of the older PC/Apple versions of the game.

In October 2022, filmmakers Will Speck and Josh Gordon announced a musical comedy film adaptation based on the game, with Pasek and Paul writing original songs for the film.^[35][36]

In October 2024, Apple Studios acquired the rights to the film, with a script co-written by the Lucas brothers, and Max Reisman.^[37]

Because the theme of the game is the colonization of the American West, some Native American critics have viewed the game as culturally insensitive or racist. The 2021 version of the game for Apple Arcade attempts to "better depict Native American perspectives" and to acknowledge that for Indigenous peoples colonization "was not an adventure but an invasion." Newer versions of the game offer new Native American characters and storylines. Oregon Trail creative director Jarrad Trudgen, a white Australian, consulted with several Indigenous scholars in an attempt to remove stereotypes and historical inaccuracies.^[38][39]

• The Oregon Trail series at MobyGames
• The Oregon Trail 1990 DOS edition at the Internet Archive
• The Oregon Trail 1991 Macintosh edition emulated with PCE.js