How The Oregon Trail Took Over Computer Labs
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 24 ноя 2020
- The Oregon Trail is perhaps the most successful educational computer game of all time, but its humble origins include a stint in a converted janitor's closet and the casual deletion of every line of its initial code. In this episode of Throwback, Erin traces the history of your favorite computer lab activity.
The surprising history of the Oregon Trail changed computing, helped Apple achieve classroom dominance, and gave countless young people digital dysentery.
Website: www.mentalfloss.com
Twitter: / mental_floss
Facebook: / mentalflossmagazine
4th grader problems: you have 30 min of computer time what do you play? The Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, or Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. Those where the simple days
or lemonade stand
Who got to play Oregon Trail that day, because copies were limited...😭
Or SimCity, a couple years later. That was my fave.
Don't forget Math Blaster.
@@nostalgiaprincess Lemonade Stand was developed by MECC too, though the most famous version was rewritten at Apple.
I bought my children that game in the 90s and it became a family game time huddled around not a television, but a Wndows 95 based system.
Thanks to those three for many family laughs.
I'm 42, and OT was a staple of my childhood on those old apple IIs. Never could beat that damned game. Found an online emulation a little while ago and still barely made it halfway!
@J LA I think I've done it once or twice but it's been aeons. (class of Y2K)
How about "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?" since kids were so bad at geography? (and some world leaders...) Many people would love to see a collab w/ Geography Now channel
The first Oregon Trial game to be played was when Prince was a student at Bryant Junior High in Minneapolis. I wonder if he played the first version of the Oregon Trial
My uncle went to school with Prince. I'll ask him if they got to play it.
Oregon Trail is one of the very few games that I've never actually completed. Sucks dying to frigging exposure.
You should try it again. You can find it in emulation many places on the web, even right in browser.
OregonTrail first seen in a school on a computer screen in 1971? My local school, in SE Missouri, afforded a computer for the administration office, it was shared by School Superintendent, Principal, Nurse, and Secretary, that would have been around 1980.
Access to computers by student occurred during the 1985-86 school year, where a small storage room became the computer lab, it housed 2 Apple IIc , and 2 Texas Instruments ti-99 4/A's. Oh, how far we have come in this world.
I started Highschool in 1971 and found that there was a teletype in the storage closet in the back of the Math Lab. The school district had provided it to the high school but with no clear plan on what to use it for. The Math Teacher showed one of the older students how to use then we learned from him. I rode the Elementary School bus to get to school early and my friends and I played on the computer before and after school. We were the first High School Computer Nerds. I bough a book of 100 Basic games and we tried a few; but, mostly, we had fun playing with the system commands and seeing what we could find. It was a fun time and I learned a lot. I even got a job writing computer programs when I started college in 1979. At College I got a Masters in Electrical Engineering and still do lots of programming. That teletype changed my life.
Because my parents were teachers, we were one of the first families on the block to get a computer. I'm pretty sure this game was the majority of what that computer was used for.
That's pretty close to my own experience.
I spent way too much of my childhood playing Oregon Trail
I have to say dying of dysentery was always the highlight of my week when I was a kid. ☠️
I remember playing that game when I was in 3rd grade. I am a retro system collector now and have the game for many many systems. I remember in school being so happy to be able to type text whenever possible in the game. I was even able to meet one of the programmers working for MECC when I was in 8th grade.
Part of the 1990s? I was in 5th grade class of 1999. We played Oregon trail every other day in the computer lab, alongside Number Munchers and Math Blaster.
Let me guess, you also played Battle chess?
Trapper keepers, pizza, Apple 2 and the Oregon trail... You just took my mind back to the 80's. If you would've mentioned garbage pail kids I might've gone into the bathroom and feathered my hair and French rolled my jeans legs!!!
Ah, man. Oregon Trail was my childhood as an 80's kid.
While I played plenty of Oregon Trail, Amazon Trail was the one I subk countless hours into.
"What shall we do with this?"
Here in Canada, we had that too, but more importantly, we had Cross Country Canada.
Same text based ideas, but taught Geography more than history.
I’m not the only one who remembers the cross country Canada. Loved that game!!
Finally! I've been looking for a way to play this for over a decade! It's like I'm getting that last spot on my 90s kid punchcard at last!
In 1986, I was the leader for a group in my G/T class. All of the other groups dies off, but we made it (with only a single death during the journey) all the way to the final pass that lead into Willamette Valley... where we were all triumphantly killed in a freak blizzard. Damn you, OT.
I started playing Oregon Trail in the summer of 1975. I quickly learned that you only needed a minimum of food to start. Hunt all the time and you can eat well the whole trip. It was also better to confront the ruffians rather than trying to run.
10cps dumb terminals with 400 bps modems. The height of mid 70s tech. We even had paper tape readers on them.
I remember when my teacher asked which game we'd like to get for our 15 min of computer time. The response? : ORGERON TRAIL!!!
I had no ideas what it wasd was, but believe u, me, it wasd most definitely awesome!
Coolest kid in class was the one who made it to Oregon.... within 15 min, or teacher bitching .
Never, ever knew that it was from MN! THANKS!!!
I hadn't thought about this game in forever! Then I watched StarKid's "Trail to Oregon". Which possibly has the funniest song about dysentery, along with other catchy tunes.
My school was still having us play Oregon Trail throughout the 2000s.
As a Canadian student of the 80s and 90s, I've only heard about this game until recently on RUclips. Sounds pretty cool!
This was absolutely my favorite game when I was in Elementary School Middle School high school college you know I loved it for a short time 😂
It was all the rage in fourth grade for a bit. I saw it many times, but only actually played it once, off to the side during a parent-teacher conference or something. I was a doctor and actually managed to win. Then I tried jumping to another computer to play Otto Matic's bouncy third level with the immortality B-I-R combo, but the meeting was over and we went home. I'm satisfied with a 1 for 1 record.
As a teacher of technology in that era I want to correct you.
Students WEREN’T PLAYING a GAME they were “ENGAGED IN AN EDUCATIONAL SIMULATION ”.
I explained this to every class when I introduced it I reminded them when you go home tonight and your parents ask “What did you do in the computer lab today?” you’re not going to tell your parents you played a game but that you were engaged in an educational simulation.
Ahhh, Political Correctness.
@@TheGuyThatEveryoneIgnores Absolutely not. Nothing politically correct in that comment at all.
When you ask kids when they’ve done a simulation on a computer in their own words what they’re doing? Nine times out of ten they’ll tell you they’re playing a game. That there was learning going on at the same time never in enters their head.
Learning should be engaging and fun, but that doesn’t mean it’s always playing a game.
I grew up in MN & didn't know about Oregon Trail's connection to MN and MECC. This is dope
I’d love to see one on Zoombinis. That was my favorite educational game. My third grade teacher would allow me and my sister to take it home on weekends because she had taught my whole family. I’m sure we had Oregon trail, but not being a big reader the puzzles in this game was amazing though I remember crying constantly when some of my zoombinis didn’t make it.
I would list everyone I had a crush on and whoever lived is who I really liked 😅
The original survival game! Thanks for McHawty. Happy Thanksgiving Mental Floss! 🤙🏽
Remember playing Oregon Trail the very first time in Kindergarten on those old pale tan box Macintosh computers in like 1994, and on several updated versions in grade school after that. Math blaster too... Reader Rabbit? Carmen Sandiego? Amazing.
In the era of 24 hour game jams, I don’t think many people are going to think it’s impossible to make a game in two weeks
And interestingly enough, what started as an idea for a boardgame did eventually become one...
boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/205322/oregon-trail-card-game
Every computer in Oregon had that game. It was like a requirement to reach our next growth milestone. That and kid pik or however you spell it.
A fantastic mini-documentary! Very enjoyable!
Literally the only thing we ever did in computer class, along with Logo. and a game called Lemonade Stand.
I found a bug in Oregon Trail when I played it in grade school in 1984 on an Apple II+. When buying goods in a store, the game did not check if a negative number was entered for the money to be spent on an item. I entered -1000000 and was credited with a million dollars! 😀
I never played it (maybe I will?), but I didn't know that "The Oregon Trail" originally started in the *early* 1970s! My first time seeing an ad for it was in the '80s.
03:55 That word makes me thing of this song: ruclips.net/video/4cdZQ41rGAg/видео.html
You should do an episode on euphemisms like devils lettuce
I still remember playing this game in elementary school using that humongous floppy disk. I also loved playing number munchers. I got the high score in my close in the 3rd grade. Lol
I loved that game so much and that was a final deciding factor in where I went to college. I went to college in the middle of nowhere (they had a strong program in my major and small tight community) but it was on the Oregon Trail.
While hunting, I always hoped for a bear to show up. Sure, they could kill you, but they always ran toward you instead of away, which made them easy to shoot.
It was this, "Number Munchers", and "Where in x is Carmen San Diego?" that were extremely popular educational games. Those were semi-fun ways to pass time at school. I doubt anyone played these games at home, because most households with kids had a Nintendo console.
So I liked the wear in America's past version of Carmen San Diego better than the where in the world is karmazine eagle but I was addicted to that show
The sad thing is that a lot of people only know about this game because most American schools couldn't actually be bothered to develop a legitimate computer curriculum, so they just turned kids loose on vaguely-educational games and hoped for the best.
Also, I remember having a game at home called Africa Trail, which was like Oregon trail except it took place in modern Africa, and instead of settlers with wagons you played a group of bored, rich adventurers that prefer cycling to mountain climbing, sailing, and all of that other stuff that independently wealthy people do just to prove they can.
Yeahhh.. The lines outside the janitors closet in my school where definitely for smoking the devils lettuce.
The most interesting thing, today The Oregon Trail could be programmed today on modern hardware and programming languages in just a few hours to get a general game, debugged and finishing touches in a few more
Even the 1985 version was mostly written in BASIC.
The owl with the mustache is adorable :)
For those who want a trip down memory lane by playing The Oregon Trail again, you can find and play it at archive.org
I bought a little handheld version of "The Oregon Trail." The unit itself has a TRS-80 aesthetic, but the graphics seem to be the Apple IIe version. It's still as fun & frustrating as I remembered it.
Loved this game as a young grade schooler.
My public school had apple IIe’s with this game in like 1998, 15 years after that kind of computer came out.
Does anyone remember the Canadian version of this?? Cross Country Canada. Definitely a favourite of mine! But also where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? Loved that game!!
Another excellent game of that era is Super Star Trek. In order to make sure these games were not lost to history, I created 64K BASIC to run them on Win/Mac/Linux directly (free, open source, not emulation). If you want to play the original Oregon Trail, like it would have been played on a teletype, get 64K BASIC from www.basic-lang.org/ and use the command: basic //oregontrail
Strange computers were scare in school for me 83-94 ( 94-95 got better) but i had it at home.
Anyone remember Odell Lake? :D | I enjoyed Amazon Trail much, much more than Oregon Trail. It was more visually appealing, and you got to explore the landscape more. I know, those are benefits of being a sequel.
Yep. Odell Lake actually uses the same sounds as the Munchers games.
@@fnjesusfreak Haha, I didn't know that! I do remember Number Munchers but I don't remember the sounds. ^_^
The story goes that an entire generation has PTSD from all the times they've died of dysentery.
never finished it. kept dying of dysentery.. and that's when i discovered "Taipan"!!
When I was in high school, a lot of kids would play Taipan in the school's library because the librarians thought it was an educational game. They had no idea it was about trading opium. Although Taipan had a binary file, it was actually written in BASIC. As a crude joke I would change the date in the game so that I would land at the port of Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945.
I sadly didn’t get to play this game in school. Did anybody born in 2000 or later get to play this?
I only played it once. The wheels on my wagon broke and I got dysentery
Unrelated question. Why don't freezer have a light inside them but a fridge has?
We had OT II
…Oh MECC, "meck"! That's how I always said it……
I loved Oregon Trail as a 90s kid!!
Was I the only twisted weirdo who named my party after people I hated & then took glee in purposely killing them off? 😅
This game similar to the mecc version needs an android port.
I actually built a pipeline that crossed the Oregon Trail. Near Ione, OR.
I forgot about number and word munchers!!!! #NERDGASM
Are those board games behind you? Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the board game?
European here, I've only heard about this game probably in my thirties
The oregon trail was one of the first games i ever played. It was in 1991 at a computer lab in my school. The other one we loved was Mario teaches typing. Then in high school around 1997 Myth the fallen lords took over our computer lab and we had lan parties at school. We created a school club solely to play Myth the fallen lords. Those were the days.
Wow, I wish we had games like this when I was at school. We just had a ‘game’ where you had a dot that you were supposed to believe was a turtle and you had to program in instructions to get it to move, leaving a line where it went to draw a shape (eg forward 2. Left 90 degrees. Forward 2. Etc)
That was LOGO, it was actually considered a programming language - one designed specifically to introduce kids to the basics of programming.
Ever considered doing Carmen Sandiego?
Never was able to make it all the way through
I always played farmer.
the first program I wrote was on an Apple II in 83? 84'
I didn't know this originated in Minneapolis, MN.
Thank you for not saying "Wliiliam Ette Valley".
I know of, yet never have played this game.
I wish John Green would come back
If on PC you can play it online here: jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/mecc/oregon-trail
Who else played with the Logo turtle?
I only did it with a virtual turtle, but I have seen an actual Logo turtle.
I call them terrapins because the first version I used was Terrapin Logo, and terrapins happen to be turtles ;p
CS REPEAT 45 [FD 40 BK 40 RT 8]
I want square pizza so bad now...
Come up to Niagara Falls, you can get square pizza that actually tastes like pizza. XP
@@fnjesusfreak you don't understand. Pizza day was like a birthday party for every kid at school. That square slab of cheesy deliciousness signified the Day of Pizza celebration. There were no recess disputes on Pizza Day. There was no rabble or any rousing. There was only the Pizza. That glorious four-cornered semi-symmetrical wonder of the oven, and the harmony it brought to all things.
@@ZennExile That didn't happen anywhere I went. We did have the square pizza, but it came from an actual pizzeria. Also, we didn't have recess, because iNsUrAnCe.
@@fnjesusfreak you should sue your parents. Just sayin. You got raised hella wrong.
You might want to ease up on the teleprompter, or move it further away so you can focus in one place. the eye movement was pretty distracting
But really great video, enjoyed it a lot.
I played in the late 90s or 2000s.
Wait, who died of pneumonia?! I only got dysentery, starvation, malaria, and drowned!
Poor Terri. Getting dissed since the 1970s..
of course, You didn't die of dysentery. Little Sally However... not so lucky.
The original don't starve.
Who remembers the Underground Railroad game where you played as a freedom seeking slave on the run?
Probably 5 people that didn't have racist teachers.
This game was so fire..im.really sad you cant find the original version in the play store. Just that bs remake.
They need to do a remake, open world type adventure and include cannibalism
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
@@ChrisBrown-nr1on so i work for mormons. And they have this thing were they recreate the mormons traveling across the country, just like the oregon trail. They got really mad when i asked about canabalism....
Yea im sure they did 😂🤔😂🤔
The Donner party, be thankful you weren't invited.
@@fnjesusfreak speak for yourself! GO TEAM CANNIBAL!
Number Munchers!
Dysentery not pneumonia =p
Minnmax did it first. Minnmax did it better.
The presenter has no emotion and it's pretty clear she reading off a teleprompt with little or no input of themselves.
*You made it to Oregon and died to riots.*
F I R S T
...sorry. Had to.