Just as Oregon Trail made me realize I could potentially, theoretically, possibly, maybe die from a snake bite, docuseries like Making a Murderer made me realize I could potentially, theoretically, possibly, maybe go to prison by accidentally confessing to a murder I had nothing to do with. I’m not the only one - maybe you heard, but 20-, 30-, and 40-somethings are true crime obsessed. This text-based 1800s western-expansion simulator was my introduction to trauma porn and my gateway drug to a life-long obsession with true crime. You could even pass away from the vague specter of exhaustion, a fun lesson to kids that just the act of being tired on the trail was potentially life-threatening. You could get merked by something as morbid as diphtheria (which covered your throat in a fatal thick sheet of gray matter) or as innocent as a broken leg. Sometimes your wife gets cholera on the same day your son gets bitten by snakes. The creators at MECC didn’t sugarcoat an ounce of that game for the benefit of us young children. When your loved ones died, the most they got by way of acknowledgment was a pop-up window as part of the quickest roadside funeral imaginable.

When you failed a level, the screen didn’t read “Game Over! Play again? Y/N.” It showed you the gravestones of your dead family members and explained, in graphic detail, how they succumbed to the elements. You weren’t fighting giant one-eyed tentacle monsters or smashing buildings as a radioactive monkey. There were no massive explosions or aliens on the Oregon Trail. (Luckily, if you were playing OT, you were probably already in a library or classroom.) I couldn’t watch Power Rangers because of the violence, yet I was encouraged to play a computer game that frequently ended with my livestock drowning in a river, members of my family starving to death, and me looking up words like dysentery in the dictionary. And I’m not an outlier - most people my age were introduced to this educational hellscape in grade school.Īt that point in my life, my Orthodox Jewish parents wouldn’t let me watch action movies or even much of the news because of how explicit and smutty they could be.

To give you some context, I was 7 when I started playing OT 1996. Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter wish they had what this piece of cybernated Americana has. It was graphic, it was sadistic, and it was on Windows 95 at the Springfield Public Library in New Jersey. It’s the 50th anniversary of the most gruesome, over-the-top video game ever created.

Oregon trail 2 windows 10