Gamer Girls

Well, I watched it. I watched all 86 minutes and 21 seconds.

It was mostly an interview of two (or three?) guys who wrote the original game. Not the game on the Apple II but the game that was on mainframe computers in the 1970s.

It was interesting enough. I mean, I watched it. It took a couple of days but I watched it.

But I couldn’t understand how these guys didn’t end up getting paid anything? Near the end, they explain that it was the 1970s, there wasn’t a market for video games, people didn’t have computers, it was just these mainframe computers. Fine. I get that. But at the point that this MECC company, which I believe that they worked for, was producing the game for the Apple II, why didn’t they get money then? How was MECC able to get the rights to the game?

Anyway, I enjoyed the game in my youth. I played it in, whatever, the sixth grade. There was a contest to see who could get the farthest. We played in groups of two or three, one at a time, and I think it was just for like 15 minutes or something. But we never even played the fucking game before. We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know that you basically have to spend all of your money at the start.

Then I played it again in probably the 11th grade. We still had fucking Apple IIs in 1995. There were more modern computers that they were getting, but for this “business typing” or whatever class that I was in, they put all of the old Apple IIs in there. These “business” classes were for morons, which is why I took them. They were easy as fuck.

So I’d travel the trail. There wasn’t much else to do.

Then I played it whenever I got the internet. 1999 or whatever. Pirate version. I played some of the sequels. I think Oregon Trail Deluxe is the one that I played the most. They got REALLY bad after that. Fucking full motion video. But I liked the different professions that you could be. It wasn’t just, “The banker has more money and the farmer has less money” like in the first game. The different professions gave different bonuses and disadvantages, if I recall correctly.

I also played Organ Trail a few times. That’s a zombie thing.

A lot of people liked the hunting, in the original game, of course, but that’s my least favourite part. I try to get enough food so that I don’t have to hunt. You always have to go with the 2000 pound limit but that only works if you’re a banker, or possibly the carpenter. The farmer can’t afford that much.

According to Wikipedia, some American Indians complain about the game. Even though American Indians only feature as positive characters who help the settlers.

In this Gaming Historian video, the guys who made the game say that Indians complained about their early version because it featured Indian attacks. So they took the Indian attacks out.

I get that it was an invasion and a genocide but protesting Oregon Trail? I’d probably do the same thing. You’re living on a reservation. Half the people are drunk. There aren’t any jobs. Your ancestors have been brutalised for centuries. Stick it to the man, even if the man is Oregon Trail.

You look at their protests against the names of sports teams. Burn all of that bullshit down. Fuck baseball. Fuck football. Fuck all of this homoerotic bullshit. Millionaire players and billionaire Jew owners.

I saw that they changed the name of Eskimo Pies. Good for them. Fuck ice cream too.

I used to enjoy Eskimo Pies, though. I haven’t had one in probably 25 years. I’ll probably never have one again. You never know when the last time you’re going to do something is.