If you recognize the phrase “You have died of dysentery” you probably played a cruelly educational video game called Oregon Trail during your formative years. It was originally developed back in the floppy disk era, morphing into new versions every few years. Its most notable feature? Reducing the pioneer experience to grim impossibilities. You (okay, your character) probably died over and over by rattlesnake bite, exhaustion, drowning, broken bones, cholera, typhoid, measles, and other unavoidable miseries. The game was picked up by schools eager to boast they had a new thing called software, ultimately exposing even more impressionable youngsters to history’s horrors in boldly unrealistic graphics.
Now there’s hope. Watch Mega64 re-enact key components of the game to cure yourself of any remaining Oregon Trail nightmares.
