#1: The Oregon Trail (1971, MECC)

It's fitting that the first of the Thousand and One would be a game so revered by so many of my generation. The Oregon Trail, a 1971 edutainment program by MECC, found a home in computer labs around the country. For many, myself included, it was an early exposure to computer technology at a time when it still seemed magical.

The version of this game that I played was the Apple II virtual disk image available at virtualapple.org. This is a faithful representation of the game many of us are familiar with. Plenty of others are now available, including versions on the Wii and IOS.

Essentially you're an emigrant trying to make your way to Oregon to start a new life. To accomplish this you're going to have to make a bunch of tough decisions. Chief among these tough decisions is what you'll put on your tombstone when you inevitably run out of food and die of dysentery. Life wasn't easy in the Wild West.  The Oregon Trail is an edutainment game, meaning it was essentially a means of attempting to teach kids without having them realize they're learning. It's one of the few good examples of this idea - others include the Carmen Sandiego games and Math Blaster.

In any case, I chose to be a carpenter (ensuring I'd start with a fair amount of money, then earn double points at the end of the trail) and set out on my adventure with my four stalwart One Thousand Plus One Assistants - Amy Ellen, Caity, Devon and Stark. We were a motley crew but together we were sure to make it to Oregon. After loading up on supplies it was time to head off on the trail at the beginning of April to a rousing chiptune rendition of Yankee Doodle Dandy.

It's worth noting that the trail is long. Like, really goddamn long. That's half the country right there. And this is olden times where everything was made of wood. Shoddy, unreliable wood that would break from a stiff breeze. We had a journey ahead of us.

It's a journey that would have been a lot easier if it weren't for several quirks:

• As a group, we ate fifteen pounds of food a day. Fifteen. Pounds. That's at least three pounds each.  How does that even work?
• The trail was apparently haunted by anacondas that would strike at a moment's notice and break people's legs. At least that's what I told myself.
• The trail was also strewn with giant blue minefields affectionately called "rivers" which sought only to make us tip the wagon over and lose our supplies in embarassing fashion. Originally I thought it would be possible to avoid river-related complications by paying for ferries, but...

•  ...well, yeah.

 The trail was grueling and painful. I tried telling Caity to get with the program and stop whining...

 

...but it didn't really work out so well. An anaconda got her, I guess.

We proceeded from landmark to landmark, losing party members along the way. Devon bit the dust early on from a broken leg. Because back then, that was fatal, y'see. People had their brains in their legs and they goddamn liked it that way. Amy Ellen drowned in a tragic ferry accident, Caity became so exhausted that she just dropped dead and Stark made a heroic effort to stay alive despite dysentery, the measles and a broken leg before dropping dead toward the end of the journey. I alone was left to press on.

The final test of the trail is to float your wagon down the Columbia River which apparently runs at around two miles per hour. You have to avoid rocks but it's  not really a big deal when you  have time to make a sandwich between screen updates. And in the end...

...I alone was left to claw my way across the state line and declare myself King of Oregon. I have enough bullets to stop anyone else from challenging me for the title, at least. And with a score like that, maybe I made it onto the top ten list...

Or maybe not. Bite me, Oregon Trail.