Watch the creators of retro gaming classic Oregon Trail reminisce in a now-retro video

By Andrew Paul  |  January 21, 2021 | 8:29pm
Aux Features Video Games
Watch the creators of retro gaming classic Oregon Trail reminisce in a now-retro video
Screenshot: YouTube

Here’s some ridiculous math for you: 2021 marks retro-gaming classic The Oregon Trail’s 50th anniversary. 50th. That’s five decades of killing schoolchildren by way of digital dysentery (incidentally, it’s also probably around a decade longer than most who crossed the actual trail survived). To celebrate, the internet has uncovered some old videos of the game’s creators, Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger, discussing their elementary classroom creation back in 1996 on the eve of the seminal game’s 25th anniversary CD-ROM release. Check them out below for some low-res PC video goodness.

“The Oregon Trail is to the educational software business…what the silent movies were to the movie industry,” one explains during the bonus feature segment, which is about as hokey-sounding as it is fair, if we’re being honest.

A second video segment hints at The Oregon Trail’s “future,” promising even more sound effects, voice actors, and “full theater quality sound” in the years to come. Allow us to remind you these videos are themselves 25 years old, reflecting on a game that came out another 25 years before that. Because, as we all know, time is the hardest trail to travel of them all.

[via BoingBoing]

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