It is an educational computer game released in 1974 by Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium. The original game was made to teach the eighth graders about 19th-century life on the Oregon Trail. The player takes the role of a wagon leader who leads a group from Independence, Missouri, to the Oregon Willamette Valley. The learning trajectory of the game is straightforward, but the critical part is hunting. With guns and bullets, the players hunt the wild animals to keep them as food. In the classic version, players have to type words like Bang, but later, players control a man with a rifle who can shoot in various directions. How much the players hunt depends upon the bullets and how much weight is allowed on the wagon. The significant aspect of the game is river crossings, during which the players can lose their supply. Graphically the game has a distinct representation of the century. Throughout the game, the group members can die due to various reasons like dysentery, measles, cholera, typhoid, and exhaustion. After one of the member's death, a funeral also occurs, and the players can write a description on the tombstone. It adds a touch of reality to the game. And then the party continues down the trail, the fact! At the end of the journey, players are given points according to their performance in their chosen profession, cash on hand, remaining assets, and the members' health.
It is a text-based strategy video game depicting the life of the people in around 1847. The player buys the supplies and goes on a journey of two weeks, which involves twelve rounds of decision making. At the beginning of each round, the player gets information about the distance and supplies. The player has to hunt and then have to decide how much the party should consume. The game closes the round by random selection of one or two events and weather conditions. The events consist of wagon breaking down, storms damaging supplies, and attacks by hostile riders or wild animals. The game ends as soon as the player reaches the destination, Oregon, or dies along the way. If the group runs out of food, it leads to starvation; snakebite, hunting mishaps, or lack of clothing in winters leads to illness. Eventually, it can lead to death if the player is out of supplies or cannot afford a doctor.
For this game, you need to download and install the Dos emulator on your device. One such excellent Dos emulator is DOSbox. It uses the SDL library that makes this emulator easy to port to various platforms. It can run on Windows, Linux, BeOS, and Mac OS. With the help of this emulator, original DOS programs get a setting to run correctly. It's one of the high rated emulators and can run old DOS software on modern devices.
