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Oregon Trail — How 3 Minnesotans Forged Its Path

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-have-died-of-dysentary dept.

antdude writes "City Pages has a story and a visual history about the creation and development of Oregon Trail, one of the most popular educational games of all time. Quoting: 'With no monitor, the original version of Oregon Trail was played by answering prompts that printed out on a roll of paper. At 10 characters per second, the teletype spat out, "How much do you want to spend on your oxen team?" or, "Do you want to eat (1) poorly (2) moderately or (3) well?" Students typed in the numerical responses, then the program chugged through a few basic formulas and spat out the next prompt along with a status update. "Bad illness—medicine used," it might say. "Do you want to (1) hunt or (2) continue?" Hunting required the greatest stretch of the user's imagination. Instead of a point-and-shoot game, the teletype wrote back, "Type BANG."'"

9 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. 3 Minnesotans Forged Its Path by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    One died of dysentery

  2. I may have been one of the first players by argStyopa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I remember sitting in our Kenyon high school's computer lab (in reality, a single MECC terminal sitting on a closet - maybe a 6'x6' room) as a 2nd grader, dialing in to MECC and sticking the handset into the 300-baud coupler before sitting for what was probably hours of exciting adventure on the Oregon Trail, over and over and over.

    That had to be 1975? 1974?

    It was by far the coolest thing I'd ever experienced. Not just the honor of getting to use a computer, but the challenge of beating what was in fact a very hard game.

    --
    -Styopa
    1. Re:I may have been one of the first players by commodore64_love · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I played "Oregon Trail" in 1983-84 as part of my class, and it was not based on a computer. It was all read-out of a book like an old D&D game.

      I thought the game "cheated" at the end, because the entire class made-out very well until the end, with no deaths, but then we reached the Sierra Mountains going into california. We were all exterminated.

      What a letdown. A year of progress, just to die. I concluded the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books (and later Zork, Mindshadow, M.U.L.E.) were more fun than Oregon Trail. They had better "balance" and didn't kill-off everyone at the end.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    2. Re:I may have been one of the first players by Teancum · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you had a 300 baud coupler, you were either in one of the rich school districts or close to the University of Minnesota. Most of the connections were 110 baud, or the "high speed" connections were a whopping 220 baud during that era (74-75). A few years later with some help from the good folks at AT&T (then Northwestern Bell Telephone Company that later became U.S. West and now Quest communications) the main trunk lines were upgraded and most of the connections were upgraded to 300 baud.... but that was about 1980 when that happened.

      Most of the connections were routed to a dedicated phone line in an attempt to cut costs, where the connections were put through a multiplexer that was broken apart at the main computing facility at the University of Minnesota. This permitted most of the schools in a typical school district to use a local telephone number as it was in the local phone exchange too. Sometimes smaller school districts would share the same connections, and in my hometown the local community college and even a branch research lab of the University of Minnesota shared the connection.

      When I was in high school, I discovered that the main telephone equipment for some reason was routed through the classroom where the computer science classes were held (Mr. Knudsen's 3rd floor classroom in Austin high school in Austin MN). I and a bunch of kids in the high school held what amounted to be a computer club, and often the teacher would lock the doors to the classroom and say "make sure you close the door when you leave" where we would sometimes stay for an hour or two after school... sometimes a bit longer than that.

      We discovered a neat trick where if we unplugged the multiplexor, it would at least temporarily shut down the connections for everybody in the town. Keep in mind this was when phone lines were still somewhat unreliable, and typically when a connection dropped most people would re-dial the phone number to get back on and didn't think anything was really wrong with the equipment. In the meantime while everybody else in all of the other school districts (including I might add some college professors and college students trying to get major programming assignments finished) were busy redialing, my friends and I would quickly dial in and grab one of the temporary "empty" connections... essentially kicking other students off of the computer. Let's just say that the high school students never had to worry about a busy signal in the after-school club and sometimes even during class time. As for everybody else, their computer connections just seems a little less reliable than it really was... or rather they were depending on a bunch of high school students with selfish motives to keep the phone system going.

      I had so much fun with that system where I can't possibly begin, and much of that began with playing Oregon Trail. Yes, I got bored with that game and moved on, but it ended up making me a computer professional with shall I say an unconventional educational experience. I'll also say that in particular with the Oregon Trail game, it motivated me to learn how to type in a big hurry.... which has helped me throughout life. I particularly learned how to type "POW" and "BANG" in a hurry.

  3. Nostalgia by Onuma · · Score: 2

    TFA is actually a pretty interesting read. Who'd have thought that an early educational game could have this kind of history? I remember the old green-screen Apples, playing the Carmen Sandiego games, Oregon Trail, and the "munchers" series. Still not sure if I learned anything from them, other than typing and hand-eye coordination though...

    Just think, an entire generation would never have learned as children what dysentery is; not until they grew up and drank Mexican tap water.

    --
    What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
  4. Lets not disappoint the Slashdot traditionalists by NBolander · · Score: 2

    Mandatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/623

  5. Re:Opensource Remake/Clone by beadfulthings · · Score: 2

    I found the iPhone version to be just faintly disappointing. It's lost some of the old-fashioned "righteousness" of the old games. For example, when you went hunting, there was always a little message that said something like, "If people continue hunting in this area, the buffalo will become extinct." Indians were either helpful or oppressed. I swear, there's a scene on the iPhone app where an Indian says, "HOW!" I guess it's just missing some of that Seventies idealism that carried over through all the other versions. It's still an awful lot of fun to play, even for people who should be old enough to know better.

    --
    "Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
  6. All thats wrong with the world? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Programmers worked to make educational software for Minnesotans as part of public agency. Some of their games were so good it contributed millions of dollars to the effort.

    The government worried they were stifling the company and so sold it to a venture capitalist for $5,000,000

    Three years later he sold it to a larger firm for hundreds of millions. The larger firm kept the intellectual property and fired all the expensive programmers ending Minnesotans educational experiment. The original programmers got zilch.

    It all seems kind of tragic. Where are the public efforts to make technology help people now instead of just classes in how to use Microsoft office?

    1. Re:All thats wrong with the world? by JohnTheFinn · · Score: 2

      Agreed. And today's technology could be used so much more effectively to teach than it is. MECC was an example of government investment that worked. How come we don't see the private sector doing something similar now? Maybe there is and I just haven't seen it.

      FWIW, I worked at MECC from '90 to '96. I started out writing BASIC and 6502 assembly for Apple II games and ended as a Mac/Win programmer. I left just after SoftKey purchased MECC, and thus avoided the downward spiral to come.

      I really liked working there. The focus was on writing excellent educational software most of the time I was there and it was unlike any tech job I've done since. We wrote games and tested them at local schools, very unlike the corporate world I'm in now. Of course, not all of it was fun and games programming. There was a lot of extra effort put into MECC's products for school use. Things like grade level settings that affected the content chosen, tracking results so teachers could easily see where kids struggled, and manuals that included lesson plans and copyable handouts and worksheets. I just did a quick search and didn't see any comparable products out there. Maybe this is an opportunity for someone, especially with tablets starting to arrive in schools. Of course, with school funding dropping everywhere it may also be a struggle to survive.

      Oh, and my Oregon Trail contribution: I did the hunting in Oregon Trail II.