Mobile games developer Gameloft has released an updated version of The Oregon Trail. The game costs $5.99 in the iTunes App Store and introduces several new gameplay elements to the elementary school classic.

The game now includes 5 skill-based mini-games, side-missions and random events like bandits. Of course, everyone's favorite gameplay elements like hunting and random outbreaks of disease are still included.

iTunes Download: Oregon Trail for iPhone & iPod Touch

For you youngsters out there who don't know about the original Oregon Trail game, it was an educational computer game about American pioneer life that has a long history in North American school districts and homes. The game was inspired by the real-life Oregon Trail and was designed to teach school children about the realities of 19th century pioneer life on the trail. The player takes the role of a party of people, of a selected profession, traveling across the Oregon Trail in a Conestoga wagon.



The original Oregon Trail game was developed by John Hoffmann, Anthony Stone and Pablo Jara Meza in 1971 and produced by MECC in 1974. The game was inspired by the real-life Oregon Trail and was designed to teach school children about the realities of 19th century pioneer life on the trail.

Oregon Trail was very popular among American elementary school students in the mid 1980s to early 1990s. Many students in the United States had access to the game at school in computer labs full of Apple II computers. 20-30 years later the game has become culturally iconic and there remains an aspect of nostalgia for those who grew up playing the game. The game is also ridiculed for featuring incessant dysentery and dysentery-caused deaths.




methodshop

Labels: games, review