Why Oregon Trail is the best game ever made
Quite a few people here at SingleHop are into videogames and a constant argument is what the best video game ever made. While sleeping last night I had dreams of dysentery and fording rivers and it came to me: Oregon Trail is the best game ever.
What other game is there that you can learn history and hunt buffalo while enjoying a great gaming session I ask? There are none. Number Cruncher or perhaps Castle of Dr. Brain could be a close second to the best game ever but the absolute best game ever is Oregon Trail.
For those who are not “in-the-know” Oregon Trail is a videogame first published by MECC in 1985 for the Apple II. Many of the people here at SingleHop grew up playing this game when recess was rained out in elementary school and we got unfettered access to the Apple IIs and would spend the next 45 minutes playing the most amazing game ever.
With high resolution graphics you really felt you were on the great plains of Middle-America hunting pixel-perfect buffalo and with a herd of trusty Oxen to lead you nothing could go wrong. That’s what everyone thinks in the beginning but once you get out past Independence Rock you realize you aren’t in America anymore but the great Wild West. Your party would start developing sicknesses such as dysentery, cholera, measles, typhoid or breaking arms and legs and slowly they would die one by one. The last time I picked up this game was in recess back in 2nd grade. My daughter Paula contracted cholera I thought that my world was going to end. Nothing amounted to the distress I felt. Not even when Aerith dies in Final Fantasy VII which many people consider being the most emotional scene in any video game to date. I had to put Oregon Trail down for a week after this traumatic event only to find 10 miles down the road a patch of wild fruit was on the side of the road. These must have been magic glitter berries because instantly Paula was cured! Sadly though my son Billy had contracted measles from exhaustion and he died 15 miles later. A tombstone was made in his honor that read “Almost as cool as Paula” and I continued my trek towards Oregon City.