Westward Ho!

I recently posted on my "Random Thoughts" section about how much fun I had playing The Oregon Trail in Middle School (I thought everyone had played this game!).

Oh, how I can wistfully recall the hours spent in front an Apple II navigating the treacherous trail with my classmates during class time in grade school (this was within the public school system, of course -- hence this is why you private school stuck-ups may not know this gem); teachers across the nation, or at least those under whom I suffered, owe a tremendous amount of gratitude to the Trail’s creators for providing such an effective alternative to expending the effort of actually teaching.

If somehow you’re not familiar with the game, before setting out on your virtual adventure, you’re given the opportunity to specify your wagon leader’s profession:

An interesting array of choices, to be sure. Should your wagon become incapacitated along a large, flat expanse on the Oregon Trail, perhaps being a farmer would then pay off. Likewise, if you encountered investing or brokering opportunities somewhere along your Westward journey, a banking background would prove pivotal. As for me, I’ll stick with what I know -- carpentry. This came in handy when I had to caulk the bottom of my wagon in order to float across Big Blue River Crossing. The Ferry was not working.

I started my virtual trek into the West on May 1, 1848 with 400 pounds of food, 50 boxes of ammunition (20 bullets in each box), several replacement parts, and 40 changes of clothing for the wagon’s inhabitants, The Reverand (thats me -- I thought a little spiritual guidance would help), Wifey, Daughter, Son, and Dog (I figured if worse came to worst, we could eat the dog -- this was pre-MacMac of course). On May 26, the food supply was completely exhausted. A small fire consumed 23 pounds a few days into the journey; that, however, leaves 377 pounds of food to be consumed within a mere 26 days, which works out to the family eating a whopping 14.5 pounds of food per day. How four travelers and a dog can garner such a gargantuan appetite simply riding in a covered wagon all day is beyond me, but that’s neither here nor there.

With no food left and health rapidly declining, I opted to hunt; hunting in Oregon Trail, however, has always been a source of frustration for me. First of all, no matter how many animals you manage to kill, the game allows you to bring back a maximum of 100 pounds to the wagon. Riddle me this: why, if I can drag 100 pounds to the wagon, can I not simply repeat the process and retrieve the remainder? In addition, a 30-second hunting session somehow takes up an entire day on the trail, meaning that 15 more pounds of food have been consumed whether you bagged an animal or not, dropping the maximum to 85 pounds. For me, food, or rather the lack of it, was my undoing on the trail. The usual result of my forays into hunting:

My favorite attribute of hunting on the trail is the adverse relationship between the amount of meat on the animal and the difficulty in shooting it. The rabbits and squirrels yield about 3 pounds apiece yet are mere blurs on the screen; deer, which bound erratically and are only slightly slower than the rabbits, usually provide about 70 pounds of meat; while the bison, each weighing over 900 pounds, slowly lumber across the screen and sometimes even walk towards you, almost begging to be shot. Come to think of it, the shot pictured above really speaks to some true hunting skill; still, bringing back one rabbit nets me a -12 pound total for the day…not exactly a Thanksgiving feast.

Alas, my poor ability to hunt ultimately proved fatal; Son was the first to die, quickly followed to the grave by Daughter and Wifey. While losing the family was fairly disheartening, it wasn’t until my faithful best friend lost his battle with starvation that I became truly blue; proving his undying loyalty, he was the last to go and provided a much-needed meal.

However, a mere three days later, The Reverend (me) himself succumbed (I’ve a growing suspicion he simply took his own life out of depression); regardless, my time on the trail came to a tragic end.



The tombstone only serves to fuel my suicide suspicion; unless the oxen developed stone carving skills, only the Reverend himself could have carved the tombstone. Speaking of oxen, why the hell did the family not start consuming the team of eight healthy oxen pulling the increasingly emaciated family through the wilderness?

To its credit, Oregon Trail makes an effort to slip a bit of humor into an otherwise morbid game; on May 17, 1848, I was informed that “You’ve passed a gravesite, would you like to take a closer look?”


Your guess is as good as mine…but until you have played this magical game you really dont know what your missing.

Play your own game of Oregon Trail. Let us know how you fared.