Oregon Trail

Oregon Trail is the game that raised a whole generation in the school computer lab and taught more about life than any textbook: resources are scarce, decisions have consequences, and sometimes everything goes wrong despite the best planning. You lead a settler family in 1848 from Independence, Missouri, all the way to the Willamette Valley in Oregon - across prairie, rivers and mountains.

It all begins with the shopping. On a fixed budget you buy oxen for the wagon, food, clothing, ammunition and spare parts. Save too much and you starve on the way. Spend too much and you have no cushion for emergencies. Even this first decision often settles success or ruin long before the first river comes into view.

On the road you make decisions constantly: how fast do you travel, how much does your family eat per day, do you hunt fresh meat or press on? Rivers can be forded, crossed on a raft or taken by ferry for a fee - each choice with its own risk. And then there are the disasters: broken axles, stolen oxen, snake bites and the infamous dysentery that has killed millions of virtual settlers.

Hunting is a little minigame of its own: you take aim at game and shoot, but you can only carry as much meat as your wagon holds. Blast away too much and the rest rots. This blend of planning, reaction and bad luck is the quiet tension that keeps Oregon Trail gripping to this day.

This version runs as the original DOS title in a js-dos emulation right in your browser. Click Play, the emulator boots, and you stand at the starting point of your journey. No download, no installation, no account - the 1990 educational classic exactly as it was.

A fullscreen mode blows the journey up to the whole area. Everything runs in your browser, nothing is installed and nothing is permanently stored, so the high-score list is empty again after closing. The game itself is in English and played with the keyboard, on a phone without a keyboard it will not work. Whether you survive the route or a tombstone with your name is left along the way is entirely up to you.