The Oregon Trail is a pioneering videogame, first conceived of by teacher Don Rawitsch as a means of getting across the realities of 19th century pioneer life to schoolchildren. Alongside two colleagues and some students, Rawitsch's game arrived pretty fully formed: It was used by te class, before Rawitsch deleted it from the machine and saved one paper copy of the code. Three years later, when working for an educational software company, he re-typed The Oregon Trail, and the rest is history.
The game became a classroom fixture and much more, because the truth is this is a great game: Resource management, adventure, peril, and the black humour of watching your little pioneers die in various manners. Its success has seen countless new versions over the years, and in 2022 Gameloft released a faithful but spruced-up version.
