No Son Of Mine Plays Oregon Trail Like That

My old arch enemy -- Decker is in for a world of hurt.

When I was a wee lad, my middle school library had a cutting-edge computer lab. It was in a loft-esque space overlooking the rest of the library; we ascended stairs, at either end of the smaller, oval-shaped loft space, when it was our turn to rise from the Dewey-decimal coded past to meet the tools of our binary future.

I’m guessing we had some variant of Apple ][s — I know they could display a few colors, but that’s it. We didn’t have quite enough for every student, and our use time was very, very limited. I always got the impression that our librarian wasn’t very comfortable with the newfangled gadgets, and no one was sure how to even set them up, let alone how to use them as a learning tool.

This was well before Al Gore invented the Internet (soon-to-be-our-sentient-master, all praise It), so we each had our own 5.25″ floppy disc copy of whatever software we were using. In most cases, our teachers did the right thing and had us play educational games — either Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? or my personal favorite, Oregon Trail.

I hated WWCSD? because, after everyone had checked-in and after the librarian got us up-and-running on all of our machines, we were never left with enough time to catch our art/gem/map thief. It was a pointless exercise — the culprit was free to run off to Switzerland to anonymously deposit their loot, and we were sent off to run yet another eleven-minute mile in PE.

Oregon Trail, on the other hand, was excellent. Minimalist. Raw. Gritty. It was the old west in four-color, pixelated glory. I didn’t know what dysentery was, but I soon learned to hate the damn thing as it killed my party over and over again.

Leave it to McSweeney’s to take a classic and improve upon it.  I present to you a Short Imagined Monologue by Michael Nelson Price entitled No Son Of Mine Plays Oregon Trail Like That. An excerpt…

Listen, son, we need to have a talk. This isn’t going to be easy for either of us. You are not my son. I’m sorry, I know this will come as a blow to you. But the fact is, no son of mine plays Oregon Trail like you do.

. . .

For some time, I managed to convince myself that you preferred the banker simply because his vast resources allowed you to purchase the maximum number of oxen. I was sure that you were attempting to set a speed record of some sort. Of course, I knew that the game limited you to 40 miles a day regardless of the number of oxen, but I thought you would figure that out for yourself. But you weren’t about to figure anything out. Not about Oregon Trail, and not about life.

For more Oregon Trail goodness, see the following…

• Interview with the game’s creator.
• Detailed information in this article naming it one of GameSpot’s Greatest Games of All Time.
• Play it here.