Emulator Hour: The Oregon Trail Deluxe (DOS)

The Oregon Trail Deluxe

Systems: DOSBox

Original Release Date: 1992

Publisher: MECC

Developer: MECC

I was listening to the recent episode of Triple Click and host Maddy Myers mentioned The Oregon Trail Deluxe being one of several formative games in her youth, and how just looking at the box art brought back a flood of memories.  Not being able to specifically recall The Oregon Trail Deluxe, I looked it up and while it did look familiar, I could not specifically remember the game.  My primary Oregon Trail memories revolved around The Oregon Trail from 1985 on the Apple // & //e and The Oregon Trail II that The Kid had that we played a lot of on our older sister's Macintosh in the mid-90s (it might have been 1996).  

So on my lunch break after a quick Google search, I found an online browser version of The Oregon Trail Deluxe, and I immediately remembered playing some version of this game.  The first non-Apple computer our family had was my Compaq Presario laptop I bought after high school in 1998.  By that point, DOS games were becoming less popular and I know that I only bought two DOS games, this not being one of them.  But I am pretty sure that I played this at some point, I am almost positive of that, so I ended up having to play it again because of course I did.  I should also add that when I started this game, I used people's real names because I was not thinking that I was going to be writing this article, so while I did edit the screenshots, it was only to remove the person's real name and put in their alias, which I will get to below.

Yeah, definitely played this game.

I decided to be a banker because it was the closest to what my current job is as I work in finance, but I do not actually work in a bank.  I knew that this job had the highest starting money and the lowest multiplier at the end of the game, but I was not playing for a high score, I was playing for nostalgia and memory retrieval.  For the people in my group, I decided to use Conklederp and The Squire because obviously, I am traveling with my family.  That left two open spots so I included Himo and Folly, being some of our closest friends who are married and currently without kids.  I knew that I wanted to have backup items because I knew that having a wagon wheel break or run out of bullets between landmarks without any reserve could easily end your voyage, and because I was playing as a banker and had $1,600 starting out (taking inflation into account, that would come out to $54,464 in today's US currency), I figured that that money would not do me any good if I could not spend it, so I bought several back-up items in the case of an emergency.  I decided to leave in April because the game warns you about leaving too early or too late, and April seemed like a decent enough month.

So April 1, 1848, our wagon headed out from Independence, Missouri.

By default, you start out the game with filling rations (the most food you can give people) and moving at a steady pace (the slowest you can move).  This seemed like a fine way to start and I had no real motivation to change it for the entire game.  At times when I reached rivers, I always opted for the safer option and would pay the $5 to take the ferry across.  Of the two times, we caulked our wagon as there was no ferry option, our wagon tipped over once, but we did manage to salvage all of our supplies.

And then more accidents would happen, like people getting bit by snakes, contracting measles, or experiencing exhaustion.  During these times, especially whenever someone was sick or broke a bone, I made it a point to have everyone rest for at least two days.  When the game script said there was no water or grass for the oxen to eat, I was not 100% sure what I should do.  Should I wait around for rain in the middle of July?  With the oxen not finding grass, what would resting do?  So I kept our wagon plodding along at a steady (not fast) pace.  When the game said that the trail was impassable or that the trail was rough, I felt like I was at the whims of the game and just continued.

Before we reached landmarks, I made a point to go hunting because the game says that you often cannot go hunting when there are a lot of other people around.  I do not think I ever feared running out of bullets as I would not be trigger-happy in the hunting sequences.  And like the good steward, I was hoping to be, I would only kill what I knew I could carry back, being a 200lb limit.  However, it is not always obvious how much meat you can get from a buck or a bear, so there were times when I did have to leave a few hundred pounds of meat, and for that, I apologize.  

Once at landmarks, especially rivers, I would have us rest a day or two with the idea that the oxen would be able to eat grass and drink from the water.  I do not know if that is actually how the game works, but that was what my headcanon told me, so that is what we did.  At outposts and forts, I would also have us rest for a few days for the same logic.  I would at times use the "Talk" option, but it never felt like most conversations were context or location-specific. It only served the purpose to give a bit of perspective and educational history about wagon trains traveling to Oregon.

This tactic of resting whenever something unexpected happened seemed to work out well enough until the middle of July.  Three days after The Squire suffered his second snakebite, Folly got her own snake bite and then died the same day.  I decided that we would rest that day too, but I obviously had to go hunting first, plus everyone was in poor health.  

We moved along another month-and-a-half, traveling another 300ish miles, then on September 1st, Conklederp came down with the measles.  The Squire had contracted measles earlier in our journey, potentially after our wagon was robbed of $99 and a few hundred bullets, so I blame the robbers for infecting The Squire.  So with Conklederp contracting measles, I had us rest for three days, then we had our aforementioned caulking wagon disaster of 1848, and four days later Conklederp died of measles.  I do not know how the game knew that Conklederp and I were married to give me a "Burying and mourning the dead" screen to show me sobbing over her grave 72 miles outside of Fort Boise (I'm sorry you had to die in Idaho).

The rest of the journey was thankfully uneventful as I had us head toward The Dalles as it was a city that I have actually not been to, but I have been to Hood River, being only 22 miles up the Columbia River from The Dalles.  Our option was then to take the trail over the Barlow Pass or up the Columbia River and because it was only early November, still "Warm" according to our thermometer, and not snowing, I felt that the Barlow Road would be safer than braving the river which seemed like a potentially faster and riskier option.  

In the end, I think that was best because we arrived in Oregon City sometime in the middle of November before the weather turned too cold and were beset by heavy(ier) rain and winter snow.  But we reached Oregon City with Himo, The Squire, and myself in relatively good health.

I do think I have played any iteration of The Oregon Trail (with The Organ Trail being the exception) since moving to Oregon and it is a little surreal with the Willamette Valley being the final destination as I can hop in my car and drive the less than 10 miles to the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in fewer than 10 minutes.

I would think that The Oregon Trail Deluxe holds up as a short and fun nostalgic game to play in just about 30 minutes.  That being said, there are some problematic depictions and our own perspective on the history and colonization of the West and the racist policies that built Oregon have evolved quite a lot in the last 30 years.  There is still a lot of ground to cover regarding an accurate depiction of what happened to any group apart from white settlers because as you can see in the images above, all of the characters are white and the only time you communicate with a person of color is when the game randomly generates one for you to talk to when you click "Talk" or "Trade."  When I played the original The Oregon Trail in class, I never thought about how it might feel to the 30% of our class who was not white, a very privileged position to be in.  

It really is a product of its time.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
And Then He Ate The Priest

P.S.  I recognize that there was practically no transition from talking about the game itself to talking about the problematic history that exists in Oregon and the depictions of the Oregon Trail itself, let alone in most if not all interactions of the video game.  I just felt that I could not, not talk about it.  So I did.