Oregon Trail Download

Ah,I found an Oregon Trail download! This game was the epitome of cool in my grade school, where every week in computer class my schoolmates and I would clamber into our imaginary Conestoga wagons, load up our imaginary salt pork and bullets, and head out to the imaginary West in order to seek our new homes, brave the wild, and catch imaginary dysentery! Oh, the fun we had! If your harddrive has a few kilobytes of space free for the ultimate educational game classic, download oregin trail today or buy the latest version for Windows XP.

And yet, upon rediscovering this game after close to fifteen years of its absence in my life, I realized two things:
One, that only forty minutes of play time once a week makes a game seem way longer and more challenging than it really is. When I started this baby up for the first time in ever last night, I had it beat within an hour and it left me feeling queasy and disappointed.
Two, that imaginary dysentery still sucks. Again with the queasy and disappointed.
Still, I was enthralled. From naming my party and choosing my occupation to picking out my supplies, I couldn't stop playing the oregon trail game. I grew up in Missouri and it always tickled my classmates and me when we'd set out from our home state's Independence (April's the best month – don't let anybody fool you!), and even after all this time I still found myself proudly giggling like a third-grader. There were familiar old activities around every corner, like hunting and trading, and those tough decisions (ford or caulk?) still had me racking my brain for the best choice. The chance encounters were both joyous (“You found an abandoned wagon with...”) and disheartening (“Moira has been bitten by a snake”), yet it was always fun to see what happened.
The coolest part about this oregon trail download, though, is that if you grew up playing the original game on a crappy old Apple IIe like I did, then there are some surprises in store. I didn't expect to be given different choices about what routes to take or which destinations to go to in the oregon trail game, and the exciting final decision between taking a road or rafting down a river (complete with side-to-side rafting action!) was really fun to watch if you made the decision to wing it on the water.
The graphics aren't bad for the time period the oregon trail game was released and the sound is cute. If you're a fan of the older game or just want to spend an hour on some light RPG with a cool historical bent (be sure to check out the “travel guide” when at the landmarks or forts), definitely download Oregon Trail.
Just try not to catch dysentery. It's hard, but I know you can do it! (Just kidding. You've got it already).