Apple II Bits

Last month, 1990s kids played Oregon Trail. They had nostalgia going for them when they set out from Independence, Missouri. Would a new generation of travelers, untested on the Oregon Trail, find a similar appeal on the road to Williamette Valley?

A year after shooting the original video, Buzzfeed returned to the Oregon Trail with that question by inviting three pairs of teens to play Oregon Trail.

"I have trouble believing this is from the 1990s," said one kid; "it looks prehistoric." Well, sure: the original version was released in 1971, and the Apple II edition from 1985 remained largely unchanged for the 1990 MS-DOS port played here. By that point, the game had nearly 20 years of history behind it. But kids who are teens now likely weren’t alive in the 1990s, so in that sense, the game is "prehistoric".

Even though today’s gamers may be accustomed to more action and less information, I’m still surprised by the response of one teen who survived all the way to Williamette Valley: "It’s pretty underwhelming." Oregon Trail’s graphics aren’t significantly different from the variety of pixel-art retrogames available today, such as VVVVVV, or the reading required by gamebooks, such as The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Given that many of these kids had never heard of Oregon Trail, I’d be very curious to know if their impressions would’ve changed had Oregon Trail been presented as a modern game designed with a retro aesthetic.

Many of us in the Apple II community were first introduced to the computer in its heyday. And for some younger members, that introduction occurred in the classroom, playing Oregon Trail.

If that wasn’t our last encounter with the Apple II, then we wouldn’t be surprised if we booted Oregon Trail today and saw blocky graphics and heard rudimentary music — that’s typical of an early 8-bit computer. But if we graduated from that classroom and never looked back, then we might be surprised that Oregon Trail isn’t quite what we remember — if we remember it at all.

That’s what Buzzfeed set out to test in a react-style video: it recruited adults who grew up in the 1990s (a bit after the Apple II’s height of popularity) — adults who have apparently never played modern adaptations of Oregon Trail, such as Organ Trail — and asked them to play Oregon Trail.

Despite the hardware and software being from their youth, both seem absolutely foreign to these players. They expect mouse input where there is none; they’re surprised by the amount of text and lack of real-time interactivity; the keyboard controls for hunting are indecipherable (I’m guessing it’s IJKM); and one couldn’t remember where the Oregon Trail led. (Hint: it’s in the title.)

Even if this video is a rough reintroduction, the gamers nonetheless seemed to enjoy themselves. Their exasperation at the various maladies that befall their parties has an undercurrent of amusement. One test subject even says he might go home and play Oregon Trail. Now that would be a win!

In the end, these players congratulated themselves — not on making it from Independence to Willamette Valley, but on playing the game at all. They commented, "Kids these days would hate this game… They wouldn’t have the patience." Is that true? Stay tuned…