Overview
The Apple II version of the game, showing the player's supplies while allowing them to choose their next action.Oregon, sometimes known as Oregon Trail, is an educational historical text-based strategy-simulation game developed by Don Rawitsch and released by MECC for teleprinters and early terminals (through their mainframe computer's time-sharing network) in 1975.
In Oregon, players assume control of a wagon party making the 2,000 mile journey across the Oregon Trail in the year 1847. Much of the game involves the purchase and maintenance of the party's supplies, including food for survival, ammunition for hunting and defense, extra clothing for the colder climate, and miscellany for treating illnesses. Along the way, the party must deal with various random events and misfortunes, such as poor weather, hostile bandits, and illnesses, and can die if they mismanage their situation.
The game was originally developed in 1971 as part of student teacher Don Rawitsch's 8th-grade history class curriculum and was designed to teach students about the perils faced by pioneers making their way westward in the United States. Although the original version was never publicly released, Rawitsch later used its BASIC source code to build an updated version for use in MECC's time-share system, where it was accessible to various schools in Minnesota. While the source code for the original 1971 version has not been released, an updated version (dated January 1, 1978) was officially released as part of the May-June 1978 issue of the magazine Creative Computing. The source code to the 1975 version was later found and publicly released.
An enhanced port of Oregon was later released for the Apple II in 1980 as part of the MECC game collection Elementary Vol. 6. This version includes an updated interface, a new hunting mini-game, and a graphical map showing the player's progress between each turn. This version was later ported to Atari 8-bit computers, the Commodore 64, and the TRS-80, each of which were included in their platform's version of the game collection Expeditions. The port later received an enhanced remake with the 1985 game The Oregon Trail.
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