The Oregon Trail

The Oregon Trail in its Commodore 64 form dates from 1985 and comes from the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, an organisation set up by the state of Minnesota to produce school software. The game's roots run deeper still — it began in the seventies on a mainframe, and the eight-bit version is a later shape of it made for homes and classrooms.

You lead a party of settlers along the historical route west. The journey opens with buying supplies, oxen and spare parts, and then continues through decisions about travel pace, ration size and whether to ford a river, go around it or pay for a ferry. Every choice shows up in the state of the group weeks of travel later.

The title keeps its reputation largely because it refuses to be kind. Supplies run out, axles break, illness arrives without warning and some of the party simply never reaches the destination. That unsentimental streak set it apart from educational software that otherwise stopped at quizzes.

Progress is driven by text and simple map screens, with hunting as the one burst of action. On the Commodore 64 that meant economical colour screens and a great deal of reading, which suited the material.

Its spread through American schools made it one of the most played programs of its generation with no advertising at all — copies travelled between classroom computers and children met it at school before they met it at home. The home eight-bit versions carried it beyond the classroom.

You can switch this Commodore 64 version on straight from the browser here and find out how many of your travellers make it to the end.