For a few years, the original 1971 code only existed on a printed out stack of paper, before Rawitsch added it to a MECC mainframe. That's pretty much my experience with this one, which was the first created at MECC by programmer Don Rawitsch.
Originally published by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium as an educational tool for schools in Minnesota, it was so popular it became a breakout hit, sold around the world across PCs and a variety of other platforms down the years, and spawned spin-offs like The Yukon Trail and The Amazon Trail. The series has sold over 65 million copies in total, and is one of the most popular, important, and definitive PC games of all time. I did play at least one version when I was younger, but recently devoted a few weeks to diving into every version of the most famous edutainment game of all time. Surely then, I'm perfectly qualified to compile the definitive ranking of every version of The Oregon Trail ever made. I'm from the Northeast of England, but they say the US and the UK mirror each other (I swear I've heard someone say that), and I like The Simpsons. The guy who created The Simpsons is from there, and it's in the Northwest United States. Until recently I knew precisely two things about Oregon.
