5 ms·

Play MSDOS Oregon Trail 1990 on archive.org

96 points by dragontamer 4y ago

3do 4y ago
great game, these pixel arts are gorgeous!
bitwize 4y ago
I know this is the DOS version, but seeing this makes me hear a juddering Apple II floppy drive in my head every time.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  Yeah, this looks and plays positivity premium compared to the green-on-black Apple II+ we had in school.
- jandrese 4y ago
  Back from a time when developing a game meant porting it to half a dozen different systems with wildly different capabilities and expectations.
domatic1 4y ago
I died of Dysentery
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Apparently you got better.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Don't die of dissent' Terry.
- wil421 4y ago
  Kids these days just don’t understand old school games. No saves and can’t turn off the console. Not to mention brutal games like Oregon Trail where you could just randomly die of Dysentery and game over. Guess I’ll have to ask my mom for a GamePro mag or strategy guide so I can beat it.
jalapenos 4y ago
The mere site of DOS games makes me feel so nostalgic. Takes me back to when I was a kid, sat in my room playing games from the CDs that were stuck to PCWorld magazines, on the 486 (that I nagged to get upgraded from the 386, and a CD drive for). "Simpler times, happier times", I guess. Loving the work of archive.org.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  CD drive was such a massive improvement over floppy disks, a true revolution of that time. It had/has its own problems (scratches, degradation of organic stuff inside medium over time), but compared to having games on 30 floppies, split by archives, and then seeing 17th and 24th one having bad sector or some other issue... people are often nostalgic for good ol' times, but definitely not for this stuff. I wasted so much time and nerves basically doing nothing, just watching progress bar and praying it works... There were some self-correcting archive formats back then (.par ?) which could rebuild even damaged archives by adding only few % of size, but that wasn't my story on 386 back in 1993.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    My first step before installing any MS-DOS product was to copy the software, and use the backup floppies instead of the originals, naturally this did not work with those that used strange floppy formats as copy protection.
theandrewbailey 4y ago
My nostalgic Oregon Trail version was the deluxe one from 1992. It has VGA graphics and MIDI! https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_Deluxe_The_1992 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_Deluxe_The_19...
duxup 4y ago
Twin Cities public television has a nice documentary on the creation of Oregon Trail https://youtu.be/QpV7dCBB3o8 https://youtu.be/QpV7dCBB3o8
- jhallenworld 4y ago
  I had no idea this was a minicomputer BASIC game. My middleschool's HP-2100 had Star Trek, but not Oregon Trail. https://www.filfre.net/2011/03/on-the-trail-of-the-oregon-trail-part-1/ https://www.filfre.net/2011/03/on-the-trail-of-the-oregon-tr... Here is a link to the HP-2100 game being played: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAI8Ysqbq7E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAI8Ysqbq7E Here's the code: https://www.filfre.net/misc/oregon1975.bas https://www.filfre.net/misc/oregon1975.bas
spywaregorilla 4y ago
I've heard of this game a lot but this is the first time I played it. It was... really easy? That was unexpected. Wife got typhoid and dysentery but she survived. Baby broke an arm and a leg somehow but also survived. At a glance it would seem like buying food is for chumps and you can easily get tons of food very quickly with hunting for a fraction of the price. Although the banker class has so much wealth they can just buy enough supplies to breeze through the entire journey up front.
- daveslash 4y ago
  Re>> "It was... really easy" Says the guy posting on Hacker News in the year 2022. Tell that to my 6 year old self in 1990 who didn't have a computer at home and only used a computer once a week for an hour during "computer lab" time and had to share with 2 other kids equally as dumb as myself on some old Tandy computer. Personally, I much preferred Lemmings.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    Eh. Yeah sure things are hard for kids who aren't very good at figuring out basic concepts. But a lot of games from that era were actually genuinely really hard and still are. I just thought this one was supposed to be a really tough game.
    - daveslash 4y ago
      Haha, yes. I was being a bit snarky, I apologize if that didn't quite come through. You are completely right; it is a very easy game. I went back and played it through about 5 or 6 years ago and was surprised by how easy it was compared to my memory. I suspect that many people who played it as ankle-biters themselves probably have a skewed memory of its difficulty. Many of the difficult games from that era were game games ~ they were difficult be design, to be brain teasers. The Oregon Trail, by comparison, falls into the educational games specifically aimed at lower-elementary school. Similar games from my school's weekly computer lab... - Treasure Mountain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HAxdTacsgQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HAxdTacsgQ - Reader Rabbit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re-3D8TSYd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re-3D8TSYd8 - Mixed Up Mother Goose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r28woUwTib0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r28woUwTib0 - Where In The World is Carmen San Diego https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL-13NZAXuE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL-13NZAXuE
jhallenworld 4y ago
A similar game is Pirates! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJOjSQ0yv8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJOjSQ0yv8U I like that one of the most popular c64 games was partially written in BASIC.
- Linorm 4y ago
  Which is also available on archive org (as well as the Gold version of it): https://archive.org/details/msdos_Sid_Meiers_Pirates_1987 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Sid_Meiers_Pirates_1987
ianbicking 4y ago
I picked up a handheld version [1] for like $10 on sale and was surprised that it was actually an excellent rendition. Then I also picked up a card game [2] at a thrift store and it was one of the worst games I have ever attempted to play, literally unwinnable. Oddly the reviews are good, which definitely makes me doubt reviews. (Exploding Kittens also gets great reviews and every game of theirs that I've played is terrible... clearly I need to stop being so credulous) [1] https://www.amazon.com/The-Oregon-Trail-Handheld-Game/dp/B07B61BFSW https://www.amazon.com/The-Oregon-Trail-Handheld-Game/dp/B07... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Oregon-Trail-Hunt-Food-Card/dp/B074LXS62D https://www.amazon.com/Oregon-Trail-Hunt-Food-Card/dp/B074LX...
- Bluecobra 4y ago
  The card game has pretty low marks on Board Game Geek, so you’re not the only one: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/205322/oregon-trail-card-game https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/205322/oregon-trail-card...
- flanbiscuit 4y ago
  My girlfriend just picked up the Carmen Sandiego one for around US$ 13 at HomeGoods Store, they are selling for $40+ on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Fun-Sandiego-Handheld-Electronic/dp/B07PRYTWPP/ref=sr_1_1 https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Fun-Sandiego-Handheld-Electroni... I really want to take it apart and see what's inside it, but it works great and I don't want to mess it up.
surfskatr 4y ago
It brings back many fond memories - this is the game that made me start programming as a teenager!
yitchelle 4y ago
Shameless promotion to my twitter handle for retro tech adverts. I've been posting those amazing old tech adverts out of magazines 90s, 80s and older. https://twitter.com/OldTechAdverts https://twitter.com/OldTechAdverts Stop by if you are on twitter.
futhey 4y ago
Related: I built a microsite to search all of the Archive.org games, to try out sql.js-httpvfs in a single-page app: arcade.gs
pan69 4y ago
My favourite game from around that time is Ports of Call: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Ports_of_Call_1989 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Ports_of_Call_1989
mikewarot 4y ago
Ok, having really gotten into optimizing games in the years since Long Covid took me out of the labor pool. (I played universal paperclips 100 times) It took dying a few times to finally get over my class resentment and start as a Banker (ewwww) instead of a nice honest farmer. It's better, but not a guarantee of success.

96 points by dragontamer 4y ago

3do 4y ago

great game, these pixel arts are gorgeous!

bitwize 4y ago

I know this is the DOS version, but seeing this makes me hear a juddering Apple II floppy drive in my head every time.

thematrixturtle 4y ago
Yeah, this looks and plays positivity premium compared to the green-on-black Apple II+ we had in school.
jandrese 4y ago
Back from a time when developing a game meant porting it to half a dozen different systems with wildly different capabilities and expectations.

domatic1 4y ago

I died of Dysentery

WalterBright 4y ago
Apparently you got better.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Don't die of dissent' Terry.
wil421 4y ago
Kids these days just don’t understand old school games. No saves and can’t turn off the console. Not to mention brutal games like Oregon Trail where you could just randomly die of Dysentery and game over. Guess I’ll have to ask my mom for a GamePro mag or strategy guide so I can beat it.

jalapenos 4y ago

The mere site of DOS games makes me feel so nostalgic. Takes me back to when I was a kid, sat in my room playing games from the CDs that were stuck to PCWorld magazines, on the 486 (that I nagged to get upgraded from the 386, and a CD drive for). "Simpler times, happier times", I guess. Loving the work of archive.org.

saiya-jin 4y ago
CD drive was such a massive improvement over floppy disks, a true revolution of that time. It had/has its own problems (scratches, degradation of organic stuff inside medium over time), but compared to having games on 30 floppies, split by archives, and then seeing 17th and 24th one having bad sector or some other issue... people are often nostalgic for good ol' times, but definitely not for this stuff. I wasted so much time and nerves basically doing nothing, just watching progress bar and praying it works... There were some self-correcting archive formats back then (.par ?) which could rebuild even damaged archives by adding only few % of size, but that wasn't my story on 386 back in 1993.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  My first step before installing any MS-DOS product was to copy the software, and use the backup floppies instead of the originals, naturally this did not work with those that used strange floppy formats as copy protection.

theandrewbailey 4y ago

My nostalgic Oregon Trail version was the deluxe one from 1992. It has VGA graphics and MIDI! https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_Deluxe_The_1992 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_Deluxe_The_19...

duxup 4y ago

Twin Cities public television has a nice documentary on the creation of Oregon Trail https://youtu.be/QpV7dCBB3o8 https://youtu.be/QpV7dCBB3o8

jhallenworld 4y ago
I had no idea this was a minicomputer BASIC game. My middleschool's HP-2100 had Star Trek, but not Oregon Trail. https://www.filfre.net/2011/03/on-the-trail-of-the-oregon-trail-part-1/ https://www.filfre.net/2011/03/on-the-trail-of-the-oregon-tr... Here is a link to the HP-2100 game being played: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAI8Ysqbq7E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAI8Ysqbq7E Here's the code: https://www.filfre.net/misc/oregon1975.bas https://www.filfre.net/misc/oregon1975.bas

spywaregorilla 4y ago

I've heard of this game a lot but this is the first time I played it. It was... really easy? That was unexpected. Wife got typhoid and dysentery but she survived. Baby broke an arm and a leg somehow but also survived. At a glance it would seem like buying food is for chumps and you can easily get tons of food very quickly with hunting for a fraction of the price. Although the banker class has so much wealth they can just buy enough supplies to breeze through the entire journey up front.

daveslash 4y ago
Re>> "It was... really easy" Says the guy posting on Hacker News in the year 2022. Tell that to my 6 year old self in 1990 who didn't have a computer at home and only used a computer once a week for an hour during "computer lab" time and had to share with 2 other kids equally as dumb as myself on some old Tandy computer. Personally, I much preferred Lemmings.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Eh. Yeah sure things are hard for kids who aren't very good at figuring out basic concepts. But a lot of games from that era were actually genuinely really hard and still are. I just thought this one was supposed to be a really tough game.
  - daveslash 4y ago
    Haha, yes. I was being a bit snarky, I apologize if that didn't quite come through. You are completely right; it is a very easy game. I went back and played it through about 5 or 6 years ago and was surprised by how easy it was compared to my memory. I suspect that many people who played it as ankle-biters themselves probably have a skewed memory of its difficulty. Many of the difficult games from that era were game games ~ they were difficult be design, to be brain teasers. The Oregon Trail, by comparison, falls into the educational games specifically aimed at lower-elementary school. Similar games from my school's weekly computer lab... - Treasure Mountain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HAxdTacsgQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HAxdTacsgQ - Reader Rabbit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re-3D8TSYd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re-3D8TSYd8 - Mixed Up Mother Goose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r28woUwTib0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r28woUwTib0 - Where In The World is Carmen San Diego https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL-13NZAXuE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL-13NZAXuE

jhallenworld 4y ago

A similar game is Pirates! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJOjSQ0yv8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJOjSQ0yv8U I like that one of the most popular c64 games was partially written in BASIC.

Linorm 4y ago
Which is also available on archive org (as well as the Gold version of it): https://archive.org/details/msdos_Sid_Meiers_Pirates_1987 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Sid_Meiers_Pirates_1987

ianbicking 4y ago

I picked up a handheld version [1] for like $10 on sale and was surprised that it was actually an excellent rendition. Then I also picked up a card game [2] at a thrift store and it was one of the worst games I have ever attempted to play, literally unwinnable. Oddly the reviews are good, which definitely makes me doubt reviews. (Exploding Kittens also gets great reviews and every game of theirs that I've played is terrible... clearly I need to stop being so credulous) [1] https://www.amazon.com/The-Oregon-Trail-Handheld-Game/dp/B07B61BFSW https://www.amazon.com/The-Oregon-Trail-Handheld-Game/dp/B07... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Oregon-Trail-Hunt-Food-Card/dp/B074LXS62D https://www.amazon.com/Oregon-Trail-Hunt-Food-Card/dp/B074LX...

Bluecobra 4y ago
The card game has pretty low marks on Board Game Geek, so you’re not the only one: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/205322/oregon-trail-card-game https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/205322/oregon-trail-card...
flanbiscuit 4y ago
My girlfriend just picked up the Carmen Sandiego one for around US$ 13 at HomeGoods Store, they are selling for $40+ on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Fun-Sandiego-Handheld-Electronic/dp/B07PRYTWPP/ref=sr_1_1 https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Fun-Sandiego-Handheld-Electroni... I really want to take it apart and see what's inside it, but it works great and I don't want to mess it up.

surfskatr 4y ago

It brings back many fond memories - this is the game that made me start programming as a teenager!

yitchelle 4y ago

Shameless promotion to my twitter handle for retro tech adverts. I've been posting those amazing old tech adverts out of magazines 90s, 80s and older. https://twitter.com/OldTechAdverts https://twitter.com/OldTechAdverts Stop by if you are on twitter.

futhey 4y ago

Related: I built a microsite to search all of the Archive.org games, to try out sql.js-httpvfs in a single-page app: arcade.gs

pan69 4y ago

My favourite game from around that time is Ports of Call: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Ports_of_Call_1989 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Ports_of_Call_1989

mikewarot 4y ago

Ok, having really gotten into optimizing games in the years since Long Covid took me out of the labor pool. (I played universal paperclips 100 times) It took dying a few times to finally get over my class resentment and start as a Banker (ewwww) instead of a nice honest farmer. It's better, but not a guarantee of success.