One Hundred Times Worse than the Trail of Tears.

Since this is my new blog and since this is my first post, I thought I would do things in a more-or-less orderly fashion. I’m going to spend one small paragraph introducing my plan of attack. That’s this paragraph. Next, I’m going to spend one paragraph introducing myself: maybe I’ll say what I’m interested in, or maybe I’ll say what I look like; who knows? Either way. The paragraph after that paragraph will introduce the problem — and what a problem it is! I actually started this blog because this particular problem evoked such strong emotions within my gut that I needed to convert it into ASCII and spew it onto the web.

I should probably start by saying who I am: my name is Jimmy Salvatore, and I’m currently a second year undergraduate majoring in math at the university of chicago. Now, I’m not going to list my interests, but rather, equivalently, I will list things that DO NOT interest me. These things you will definitely not find on my blog. If you do, you can tell me, and I will immediately take them off and give you a prize. They are:

- politics.

-dogs and cats.

-bourdieu.

-not being part of a solution due to not part of the current wave of problem solvers.

-festive hats, clothing, and dishes.

-guns.

-the president (see politics).

-the economy (see politics).

-bringing down the middle class white male (see guns).

-wind?

So now you should have a pretty good idea of the things that I like — and now that I’ve introduced myself, I should get on with the point of this post. So, without further ado:

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve loved the Oregon Trail computer games. In fact, I was a huge MECC fan — from the Amazon Trail, to the African Trail, to the Yukon Trail, and every one in between. If you grew up in a middle class American family during the 1990’s, you probably were exposed to Oregon Trail on the computers that were in your elementary school. At least, that’s where I was introduced to it. And, because of this, there is not a person alive today who has gone through the intense and nerve-probing ritual of rushing through the class period in anticipation of the taste of sweet, sweet taste of victory in the Sacramento Valley and come out with a bad attitude towards the Oregon Trail. It didn’t matter if you had no food — you could hunt. It didn’t matter if you went at a ridiculous pace — if everyone died, you could start over. You only needed yourself, anyway, and you died last. Trade was easy, somewhat random, and occasionally lucrative. Diseases were learned about, treated [mostly by resting...] and they became more interesting to learn about later (“i died of that once…”). Hunting was a game-in-itself; there were competitions based on the hunting screen alone! It was not yet”how much food do I need to survive?” but “how many oxen can i shoot?” or “how many rabbits can i get?” And in a shining moment of genius, MECC decided to cap the amount of food one could bring back. This illustrated the difference between practical and flashy — yes, you can shoot 1400 lbs of food, but why bother when you can only bring 200 lbs back? There was always, for every player who played it for long enough, a transitional period from the flashy state to the practical state, and it was at this point that it stopped being a game and started being an adventure.

Not ones to immediately disappoint, a few years later [actually, a number of years later from the original oregon trail on the apple II], MECC came out with Oregon Trail II. Unlike Men In Black II, the Matrix II, the Lion King II, and Home Alone II, OT2 was a huge improvement to the original. The differences were many and varied –

• The food system was expanded: now, instead of shooting one kind of food [meat.] there were different kinds of food, which fell into four categories: meat, fruit, veggies, and other. Fruit and Veggies prevented scurvy, the others prevented starvation, and the introduction of “having water” allowed people to not die of thirst. I’m not exactly sure how one “had water” in this game, except for being by a river, but regardless: water was had.
• The diseases and general mishaps that could happen were expanded — from snakebites, to mountain fever, to gunshot wounds, to the classic diseases of OT1; certainly, there was more to die from! In addition to this, you were given options as to what you could do to treat each — some of them were ineffectual, some were super effective and some, well. Some lead to a turn for the worst.
• Little details were added. Graphics updated. Ability to do a “hard, medium, easy, easiest” game were implicit in the way one chose his or her starting properties. Occupations were expanded, “bonus attributes” were allowed, and a large assortment of other items could be bought.
• In fact, there was very little that one could complain about. The only thing that was strange about this version was the hunting: instead of ’seeing’ the bullet go into the animal, you had to assume. Occasionally, it was necessary to shoot more than one bullet into an animal. While this was certainly more “realistic” than the classic OT, it is arguable whether it is “better” or even more fun. I, personally, feel the original is more fun to play — but it would have been impossible to integrate this into OT2 without seeming ridiculous.
• Lastly, the music. The music was ghostly and terrifying. When I was a kid, and played this in the dark, I would scare myself silly. I still can barely play the game in the dark — the thunder sound, the sound of sickness, and even sometimes the sound of getting close to the endpoint, when the music would increase in tempo and would begin to prick at my stomach as if to say ‘you’re so close, hope you don’t die’ — but, in this case, the music didn’t refer to the fictional character in the game; no, the music wanted me to die.

Now, the problem. A few hours ago, I downloaded the Oregon Trail 5th Edition. Now, since the second edition was about 200% better than the first, I figured that the 5th edition should be at least 5000% better than the 2nd. I was terribly, terribly mistaken.

First of all, there is no need to describe OT5. It is EXACTLY OT2. Except for a few things: The river crossing has become a ridiculous cut scene, almost ever 2 minutes a cartoon pops up to tell some kind of a story, there IS a plot [three kids and some kind of a big man go and find the kid's father in oregon, 'cause he broke his leg or something] but, the thing about it is, — you can still pick your own name, and the people you travel with. The plot of the game seems to be related to SOME of your game play, but is completely apart from the names you put in for yourself and your wagon mates. I guess you could just assume that it’s someone in your wagon train, but that’s ridiculous. Why is there an extra plot? Unnecessary. Also, the music: no more ghosts. The music is repetitive and there is only ONE song played throughout the entire game. You can actually hear some of the sound effects and the music of OT2 under the continuous beat of that damn country-bluegrass-whatever. It’s almost as if they were trying to hide the fact that this game was actually a shitified OT2.

I was appalled. Imagine someone taking something from your childhood, peeing on it, and selling it back to you but saying that, no, it is not the same thing. It is new, and improved. Even the ending is the same — you get to the end as the person you named yourself as in the title page, not as those idiot kids and their burly trail-guide Jeb, or whatever.

Essentially, OT5 is a huge rip-off. OT5 = OT2 + shit. That’s all. And, really, one of the best parts about Oregon Trail 2 is that it’s easier to die than in OT1 so the game is challenging — now, I figured that since OT5 took everything else from OT2, that dying would stay the same. I went off to oregon with no food and 23 buffalo, forded every river, fell down every mountain and crashed into an assload of rapids. Two people died. TWO PEOPLE DIED. What the hell? If this were OT2, I’d be dead before I left goddamn Soda-fucking-Springs. So, not only is it a load of shit, but it’s also wimpified so that your kids will have a better time not enjoying themselves.

I honestly believe that this game was made to appeal to concerned parents. Not ones who care about their children, mind you, but concerned parents. Ones who like to look over and see their children doing something that has cartoons, but is educational as well. This type of parents (which I call ‘idiots’) should be tied to a wagon and forced to ford a river somewhere.

To sum up, OT5 is terrible. Awful. Very bad. If I had children and they ever played it, I would disown them. If any teacher made a reference to it, I would fight them. If any BODY tried to sell me it? Well. Well. Well.