Gaming History You Should Know – The History of The Oregon Trail May 5, 2024

Like most of my generation, my elementary school offered a computer lab full of Apple II and Mac computers. This would give me my first exposure to edutainment games like Super Solvers Outnumbered and Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego. However, the school offered one more edutainment title only a few of us may remember, and it was called The Oregon Trail.

Named after the famous historical migration, The Oregon Trail was an early life simulator which put the player in control of a group of settlers eager to cross the untamed United States in search of a better life on the West Coast. The game was a lot different than others of the time, but the functions were easy enough to follow that my peers and I were able to pick up and play. We may have died…a lot, but we left irrecoverable landmarks of our progress for future players to find in the form of our player-scripted trail side tombstones.

How did such a strange game get made? Why do we remember it so many years later? In what may very well be the final episode of The Gaming Historian, they highlighted the history of this groundbreaking game. Take a look!

Did you make it to the end of the trail? Post a comment below with your memories.

The Oregon Trail is out on multiple platforms.