Trail (universe)

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The 1985 logo.

The Trail universe encapsulates a series of educational games, the most popular of which is The Oregon Trail. Being originally created in 1971, this makes it one of the earliest video game franchises. The first Trail game was created as a learning tool to teach about North American frontier life to students, and its success led to over a dozen official remakes and spinoffs, most of which were developed by MECC, as well as many copycat games, fan games, and even traditional board and card games. Of the many ports and remakes, certainly the most well-known game in the series is the 1985 Apple II release.

My first experience with a Trail game was seeing someone play the 1985 Apple II port of The Oregon Trail. The first Trail time I actually played a game was in 1987, it was the 1984 Commodore 64 Oregon port in the game Expedition, itself a port of the 1980 Apple II version. I remember after seeing the primitive UI and graphics that this was clearly an inferior game, possible a knockoff of what I thought was the "original" game. I don't remember ever playing another version of The Oregon Trail throughout my early childhood. Around 1995, my cousin got a copy of The Yukon Trail which I enjoyed playing and beat. In 2019, in order to better familiarize myself with the series, I played and beat the original Macintosh port.

My overall opinion of the series is that each game is interesting for about one or two play-throughs, but they quickly become boring, and they don't do a very good job of teaching the player about the subject material. Other than giving the player a very general idea of what the journeys were like (travel methods, hazards, etc.), most of the informative aspects of the game are entirely optional. I think the games would have been far more effective as a teaching tool if they actually had trivia questions which would require players to read and absorb the informative bits.

Video Games

Released Title Platforms Notes
1971-12-03 The Oregon Trail HP 2100 Original version. Used a teletype printout.
1974-??-?? The Oregon Trail CDC Cyber 70, Sol-20, Atari 8-Bit Minor upgrades from original.
1980-??-?? Oregon Apple II, Commodore 64 Added basic graphics. Published for Apple II in 1980 in Elementary Volume 6 and for Commodore 64 in 1984 in Expeditions.
1985-??-?? The Oregon Trail Apple II, Atari 8-Bit, Commodore 64, MS-DOS The classic version.
1993-??-?? The Oregon Trail Macintosh, MS-DOS, Windows, Windows 3 Upgrades the graphics and UI.
1993-??-?? The Amazon Trail Macintosh, MS-DOS, Windows 3
1994-??-?? The Yukon Trail Macintosh, Windows 3
1995-??-?? MayaQuest: The Mystery Trail Macintosh, Windows 3
1995-??-?? Oregon Trail II Macintosh, MS-DOS, Windows, Windows 3
1996-??-?? Amazon Trail II Macintosh, Windows
1997-??-?? Africa Trail Macintosh, Windows, Windows 3
1997-??-?? The Oregon Trail: 3rd Edition Macintosh, Windows
1998-??-?? Amazon Trail: 3rd Edition Macintosh, Windows
2001-??-?? The Oregon Trail: 4th Edition Macintosh, Windows
2002-??-?? The Oregon Trail: 5th Edition Macintosh, Windows
2009-03-11 The Oregon Trail: American Settler Android, BlackBerry, DSi, iOS, Windows Mobile
2011-12-04 The Oregon Trail: 40th Anniversary Edition 3DS, Wii
2012-??-?? The Oregon Trail Windows Phone

Others

  • The Oregon Trail: Journey to Willamette Valley (board game)
  • The Oregon Trail: Card Game (card game)
  • The Oregon Trail: Hunt For Food (card game)
  • The Organ Trail (zombie-themed video game)

Links

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