For a lot of Apple geeks, the love affair with Apple began at school, using an Apple II while playing Oregon Trail, the all-time best game where you could explore the wild west and see your whole family die of dysentery or snake bite, all before afternoon recess.
Silicon User has pulled together a fantastic article detailing the history of the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, creators of Oregon Trail, Number Munchers and Word Munchers. Those were the titles that proved that Macs were good for playing games, even back then. What I hadn’t realized is that Apple enjoyed a very close relationship with the odd, government-owned corporation:
Throughout the 1980s, key individuals from Apple Computer attended MECC conferences as keynote speakers including Apple co-founder and then-Chairman Steve Jobs and Alan Kay (an Apple fellow) in 1982, Flord Kvamme (Executive VP of Sales at Apple) in 1983 and in 1985 John Sculley, then-CEO of Apple.
Check it out and get nostalgic.
Educational computing for the masses | SiliconUser
Technorati Tags: history, oregon trail
Pete Mortensen is a design strategist for consulting firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete’s particular Apple avocations are both around design–interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!
6 responses to “Fascinating History of Oregon Trail Developer MECC”
still wish i could find a copy of Oregon Trail to work on my intel Mac Book Pro. :( oh i miss the good old days…..
Actually, Oregon Trail 5 will run on Intel Macs.
You need to put the New York Font file from an older machine (probably available online) on it and make sure to run the program in 800×600 256 colors.
The video and audio cutscenes skip a bit but the game itself runs. It’s not as good as the older ones but it does quell the need for OT.
Ahhh, the apple mac. Loved playing word munchers, oregon trail and whatever logo was supposed to be.