Matt Chat 9: The Oregon Trail

This week, Matt looks at one of the greatest educational games of all time, The Oregon Trail, developed by MECC. The Oregon Trail was developed in 1971 as a game for mainframe computers, but was later published commercially for the Apple IIe in 1985. It has also had sequels and several ports, including recent remakes for the iPhone. If you enjoy this review, rate it 5 stars, check out my earlier Matt Chats, subscribe to my channel, and visit our website at http://armchairarcade.com. Thank you very much for watching.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• oregon trail
• mecc
• edutainment
• educational games
• apple ii
• apple iie
• matt chat

[xFlipStikx]

Wow, you were on the front page of the St. Cloud Times? I didn't even see that. Than again, though, I never read the newspaper anyway, hehe. The comics are good enough for me.

[blacklily8]

LOL. Yes, as hard as it is to believe. :P

[xFlipStikx]

Well, then, all though I've seen no proof other than that very convincing paper you presented during your video, congratulations. What exactly were you on the paper for? Your books and videos about video games?

[blacklily8]

Hehe; you may be able to look for it at the St Cloud Times website. They were mostly talking about how I think games are positive rather than something negative.

[RichardEllwood]

Although the Apple II sound was never nearly as good as what the Commdore 64 SID chip was able to produce, this looks like an interesting game nevertheless. I'll boot up my Apple emulator one of these days and try this game out. Thanks for the great review, Matt!

[blacklily8]

It's definitely a fun game if you want to learn more about U.S. history! ;)

[tykk86]

Whenever someone says Oregon Trail, desyntheria comes to mind... wonder why -.-

Not a way i'd wanna go.

[TinyTank2]

I remember playing the deluxe edition in elementary school. I always set the pace to grueling and took shortcuts because that was the only way to finish it before free period ended!

[actionist2009]

I had to play this peice of shit game when I was in grade school. That game was boring and it sucked! Id rather learn about history in a textbook!

[antdude]

@RichardEllwood Online: virtualapple . org

[Smushed001]

I still play this game all the time, mostly on an old windows 95 game and a mobile port

[digiprez77]

From what I remember this is the second iteration of the game. The first was B&W, and was much less entertaining. At school we didn't have enough disks to go around for the good version, so sometimes you would get stuck with the crap one. Either way I would always get in trouble for just hunting and never really playing the game.

[kuntgames616]

This game was fun! One time i pulled out my shotgun in the game and shot a whole bunch of animals and then i jumped off the computer and did a school shooting! Another time i played mario bros and i killed a mushroom guy and then i jumped up and ran back to school and did a school shooting. Another time I played a fishing game and then i jumped up and ran back to school and did a school shooting! If it wasn't for those games i wouldn't be in jail today! Those were the days! =D

[zaengo]

they gave my class a version of this game in school to learn about what it was like to be a settler. by far the best thing that damned place ever did for me.

[Konuvis]

I'm French and trying to think of any such games... but nothing really comes to mind.

One game though I can recall is an adventure game set in Versailles which came out in the mid 90s. Really fun and immersive, at least at the time.