I’ve become addicted to beating The Oregon Trail – that old school game for the ancient Apple IIe . (www.virtualapple.org). I haven’t played it since I was maybe 10 years old. Back in those fabled and wonderful days of yore, I always picked the banker as my starting profession, giving me nigh unlimited resources for my journey. I could load up on ammo for my hunting needs, plenty of clothes for my children, many yokes of oxen and ride to Oregon with ease. Capitalism paved the way for luxurious pioneering – why play the game at a disadvantage? That’s just stupid.
On the other hand, choosing the farmer always seemed like a death march. How could I possibly reach my goal on $400? That’s madness. Never in all of my youth did I choose to play as the gentle yeoman.
After finals concluded, I stumbled across the game and figured why not try as the farmer. And so it went – my family was forced to live on meager rations, traveled at a grueling pace and only had 1 set of clothes. They suffered from dysentery, broken arms and highway bandits. Life on The Oregon Trail was tenuous and hard but I beat the game and made the high score.
It was actually more fun to play the game with little on hand. The trick to beating it as the farmer is to load up on a lot of bullets and little food at the outset, and then hunt while on the trail. I tried the game as the banker for comparison. The banker was constantly beset with problems, never had enough quarry to hunt and suffered innumerable broken axles. While things were tough for the farmer, luck favored him.Was Apple trying to send a message to the youth of a generation about excess, life, making your own opportunity and hard work?
And so, as I sat and drank my adult beverage after finals, I wondered, am I here at this school because I think becoming a member of the banker class will lead to a life of ease? Or are all of my oxen going to die anyway? And then I realized that there’s nothing quite like the supreme, angsty arrogance of questioning the merits of your own privilege or analogizing it to a video game.
Life is ok and the blog title was intentional.
February 9, 2009 at 3:35 pm
What a great game that was to play. My favorite game from that era was Karateka… It was sooooo far ahead of its time in gameplay.