History of MECC and Oregon Trail

Gammu writes "For the past thirty years, many children have been raised with a heavy diet of MECC games like Oregon Trail, Odell Lake and Lemonade Stand. These products weren't developed by a major game developer. Rather, they were developed by the state of Minnesota for use in their schools. What began as an initiative to get Minnesota students ready for the micro-computer age turned into a multi-million dollar a year business whose products are still used in US schools even a decade after MECC was sold off to another developer."

Comments

Re:Link?

[NappinLeprechaun]

http://www.virtualapple.org/oregontraildisk.html
Enjoy :)

You can play these games online!

[antdude]

Play Oregon Trail on Virtual Apple 2's emulator. There are other games as well.

Re:The Censorship of the Oregon Trail

[Anonymous Coward]

I just read Ambrose's account of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Yes, some Native Americans stole from settlers. Of course, settlers were also guilty of abominable behavior to natives. Judging either group as a whole is simplistic to the point of being naive.

If "real history" came into such edu-sims, they wouldn't be rated E for everyone, and the tribes would've been quite different. Some friendly traders who even offered up their wives for the settlers, believing that this captured their power. Some wanted to use the white politically to settle scores within their tribe, or attack a competing tribe. Some tribes were aggressive killers to be avoided at all costs. And some settlers would be bringing slaves along to do some of the heavy lifting.

Thievery was common all over the place. A rifle or a horse could be the difference between living well and barely living.

Re:The Censorship of the Oregon Trail

[Nimey]

I had probably four or five versions of Oregon Trail just on my Apple //c, and one did indeed have attacking Indians. You would encounter Injuns, and the game would say if they looked hostile or not (it was never wrong). You could keep going, circle the wagons (which had no effect), or fight. If they were hostile and you kept going, they'd raid your supplies. I don't remember what happened if they were friendly but you fought -- either they ran off or you killed innocent pixels.

I can't remember if that was the version on the 4-game disk[1] or the Microzine version; probably the former.

[1] All Western-themed, IIRC. OT, a text-based "defend the Alamo" game, some top-view Indian-fighting game, and I don't remember the other.