The Oregon Trail for Windows

In 1993 MECC released The Oregon Trail for Windows 3.1. It is the mouse-driven design of the Macintosh version and The Oregon Trail Deluxe, rebuilt as a Windows program with a menu bar. The trip is the same: eight occupations, Matt's General Store, and the 1848 journey from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon's Willamette Valley.

The Windows version adds details of its own, from a wagon that can be too heavy to a choice to wait at a river. It came out on floppy disks and on CD, and the CD edition is the one you can play on this site.

In 1993 The Oregon Trail became MECC's first CD-ROM product ever. CD-ROM drives were just arriving in schools and homes, and MECC gave the Oregon Trail CD away as the free product at its MECC '93 conference. MECC described its first CD versions as the Macintosh and MS-DOS editions of the game with improvements in sound, music and graphics, and a timeline of MECC's history lists a Windows CD among the new releases of that year.

The trip itself is the familiar one. What the Windows CD adds is sound. The people you talk to along the trail speak their lines out loud, and buttons under each picture play and stop the voice. MECC's later history says the first CD versions quickly became best-sellers.

You name yourself and the four people in your wagon and pick one of eight occupations. Bankers start with the most money and get no bonus. Doctors save more sick and injured travelers, blacksmiths and carpenters are better at repairs, and farmers keep their oxen healthier. Most jobs that start with less money get a bigger bonus on the final score, up to three and a half times for a teacher.

Then you choose a month to leave, from March to August. Leave too early and there is little grass for the oxen and a risk of late spring snow. Leave too late and you may not reach Oregon before winter. Last comes Matt's General Store, where you buy oxen, clothing, bullets, spare parts and food.

The Windows version weighs everything you carry. The trail screen shows the wagon's weight, and a red Overloaded warning appears when it is carrying too much. The Drop button lets you leave supplies you no longer need by the side of the trail.

Food is split into perishable and non-perishable, and the Party Status window lists both, along with each traveler's health, your rations and your pace.

At each river the game tells you how wide and how deep the water is. You can ford it, caulk the wagon and float it across, or take a ferry where one runs. The Windows version adds a fourth choice: wait to see if conditions improve.

The trail also divides. After South Pass you can head to Fort Bridger to buy supplies or take the shortcut to the Green River Crossing.

Things go wrong, and in the Windows version many of them come with a painting of their own: a broken wagon tongue, a thief in the night, a fire in the wagon, a desert with no water. Some ask you to decide, like whether to spend a day trying to fix a broken part.

People fall ill with cholera, typhoid and other diseases, and rest and good food help them recover. A doctor in the party can save someone who is near death. When someone dies, the game shows the family burying and mourning them. The wagon stops for the night, and you cannot hunt in the dark.

Hunting takes you into a painted landscape where deer and other animals run past, and you aim with the mouse. How long each trip lasts is a setting on the menu bar, from 20 seconds to 2 minutes.

However much you shoot, you can carry only part of the meat back to the wagon, and the other people in your party help you carry it. Keep hunting in the same area and the game becomes scarce.

If you reach the Willamette Valley, the game adds up your score. Each traveler who arrives earns points depending on their health, and you get points for the wagon, the oxen, spare parts, clothing, bullets, food and money. Then the total is multiplied by your occupation's bonus.

The best scores go on the List of Legends. And if your whole party dies on the way, you can once again write an epitaph for the grave marker.

The Windows version kept its own version numbers. By 1996 MECC sold the game on a hybrid CD that works on both Windows and Macintosh computers. Its Windows side holds two programs: a 16-bit version 1.1 for Windows 3.1 and a new 32-bit version 1.2 for Windows 95.

That disc also carries demos of other MECC programs of the time, including Oregon Trail II, Africa Trail and MayaQuest. It came out the same year the software company SoftKey completed its purchase of MECC.

The version on this site is the 1993 CD edition, running in Windows 3.1 right in your web browser. It is free, and you do not need an account to play.

Click inside the game to capture the mouse, and press Esc when you want your pointer back. Windows 3.1 moves its own pointer, which is why it needs the mouse captured. As a guest, your saved games stay in this web browser. If you are 13 or older, an optional account keeps them for you.

• A Windows program for Windows 3.1, played with the mouse
• On CD, conversations you can hear as well as read
• Menu bar settings for simulation speed and hunting time (20 seconds to 2 minutes)
• A wagon weight readout with an Overloaded warning, and a way to drop supplies
• Perishable and non-perishable food kept apart
• Night stops, and no hunting after dark
• An extra river choice: wait to see if conditions improve
• Epitaphs for the grave marker when a party is lost
• Eight occupations and the List of Legends, as in Deluxe