iPhone Review: Oregon Trail

By Ned Hepburn on April 8th, 2009

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There’s a good chance that anyone brought up in a certain time period – i.e the mid 90s’ – will remember computer classes. Those sterile old Mac’s with their unfriendly interface humming some 30 odd machines in a room already bring back memories of 6th grade awkwardness. If you were lucky enough, and finished your assignments on time, you got to play a wonderful game called Oregon Trail.

Oregon Trail was a video game where you banded up a group of other pioneers and forged ahead to the magical world of Oregon in your wagon. You had a set amount of money to begin with which you had to budget out throughout your time across the country. Forging rivers was a bitch; if you chose to go ahead on your own without help you risked losing one or more of your livestock and supplies, but if you had the misfortune of a guide that ripped you off out of a lot of money, you were left destitute until you came to the next Fort, which in the game could take a while. It was a game of strategy, to say the least. And you also got to hunt cartoon buffalo. That was the fun part. The whole game was pretty rad, to say the least.

They’ve just released a version for the iPhone which is highly addictive and brings back a flood of memories. The game is somewhat more cartoony than the NES-looking version from the mid 90’s – a refreshing update. Once again you get to pick your characters names which can lead to a lot of fun. Just imagine being told “Mike Hawk has dysentery” and having panic set in until you can afford to take enough time off to heal Mike Hawk. The cartoony version looks dazzling, like something off of Nintendo’s highly popular DS, although the music after a while can get somewhat grating. Hunting is a blast but a lot easier than expected: you now simply just touch the screen to shoot as opposed to the confusing as hell version for the old Mac’s which – in my humble opinion – was a lot more fun simply because of its frustration.

The game also adds a few new mini games like a Simon Says style telegraph game which can win you some much needed extra points for medical attention. I’d like to draw special attention to the gold panning mini game which pops up occasionally: its a ton of fun – a TON – and could be released as a game unto itself for younger players.

The only draw backs are few but notable. The load times between games and traveling take far longer than they should and the “narrator”/guide character becomes annoying after 10 times telling you “well hello there doggie! Lets go fishing!”. And lets be honest. Maybe its just my age, but the game is a lot easier than I remember it being. Play for a solid hour and you’ll complete it, and unless you’re the type of masochistic personality that wants to keep playing on harder levels for no reward and no unlockables – something that is clearly missing for the more advanced player – it doesn’t warrant much repeat playing unlike such iPhone mega-games like TouchGrind or the upcoming Sims iPhone game.

This didn’t stop me staying up until 3am playing it one night just to get to damn Oregon, though. It’s an addictive game, and with a few tweaks it could be a real 10. It’s available through the iPhone app store for a pretty decent price of $5.99, so hop on that trail while the going is still good.