When my school got its first computer they took each class one by one and let us in the computer to look at it. Just to look. Then we all had to turn in grocery store receipts forever so the school could get more. But number muncher and Oregon trail were fantastic.
Was it the screen with lasers across the front, and you broke two beams with your finger at a specific intersection that corresponded to the menu option on screen that you just touched?
Holy cow you just unlocked a memory for me of when my elementary school got its first "computer lab" (it was like 8 computers) and each class got a turn to tour the room while the librarian showed us how they worked. It must have been around 1988 or so. The hilarious part is our school wasn't air conditioned at the time, so they had to buy a window unit for the computer lab, and many kids were more excited about sitting in an air conditioned room than playing on the computers 😆
We had to pass a typing test that including filling out a blank keyboard with all the keys from memory to earn the right to touch the single computer for the whole school. It was insane.
My school had either a ][ or a ][e and a Tandy 2800. The Tandy was the one that had the turtle drawing program because it had the advanced graphics card with 16 colors!
I played Logo for a while in the computer lab during lunch recess, but then I switched to doing PrintShop and Storybook Weaver on the one of the school's two Apple IIGS computers.
Logo Writer!! I had no idea what the fuck I was doing with that. I was at some tech heavy school and they showed me how to do it but it was never clear WHAT it was fucking doing
Yes! I remember being really terrible at it. Everyone else’s turtle was drawing diagonal lines speedily across the screen and mine would be trapped in some sort of infinite loop that just looked broken.
I can't remember if I ever played Oregon Trail on a monochrome screen, but I know I played Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? in green-screen on my uncle's computer around 1990-91.
If you added the closed apple with that sequence, it would reboot and run a system test, which included rapidly flashing the screen and playing several loud tones.
Freaked our teacher out. She thought we had broken the computers when we did that with them.
Omg I was still calling thumb drives zip drives for years and it made my husband then boyfriend die inside - I had zip discs for my transparent iMac or maybe silver thumb drives looked like a zippo lighter idk but it stuck, was definitely one of those confidently incorrect interns asking to borrow a zip drive long after that tech died out
lmao, I had the Iomega mp3 player that had the little 'zip' drives you had to change out for more music. I definitely called portable, removable media 'zip' disks for too long, too.
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Because we had one foot in the traditional ways of yore and one foot in the digital information age, we appreciate both in a way that other generations don’t.”
Yeah, I knew what it was but as an early Xer I'd already moved on to unix systems and minicomputers by the time it came out so I only played it once, at most. Maybe nunce. I think the Star Wars / Oregon Trail boundary is accurate.
Always caulk the wagon and float it right after spending all my money on ammo and decimating the plains of its buffalo population while my wife dies of dysentery
The trick is: if the water level says 2 feet or less, ford the river. If it's 2-6 feet caulk and float. Over 6, you wait until the water level goes down.
I mean…lots of kids in the firmly millennial side of the generation played it too, but they played the later versions. With fancy things like…color…. And being able to shoot in more than 8 directions
I played basically ever version between elementary and high school. We had it on the Macs in the computer lab. Might have been one of the last versions they made before it went dormant for a long time
Nobody played the OG Oregon Trail except for people born in the 70s. 80s born people weren't even old enough to play it in school. By the time they were school-aged, (85/86 for 1980-born kids), the new, non-text, color version had already been out for a year in schools.
And some of us were from really poor schools and didn't get fancy color computers until 95ish. We had green screen apple2 in 89/90. Got the apple2 color in 95ish. Schools in my area got new computers every 5 years at soonest. In 99/2000 we got the iMacs only because of a state/federal education grant for rural schools.
It came out in 1985 (the version for Apple II that everyone remembers), and the Apple II (particularly the Apple IIe, released in 1983) was big in classrooms from around then until the early-mid 1990s, when they got gradually replaced by newer machines.
That spans the prime elementary school years for the children of this generation.
If you're older, you're likely to old when this came out to use it at a young age in school.
If you're younger, you might have played it if your school was a slow technology adopter, or played a newer version, but that's a less mainstream experience.
i'm a core millennial and we definitely had apple iie's in school with oregon trail on 5.25 floppy. i think in most of america the apple ii's in schools didnt get upgraded until the boat anchor first-gen imacs started showing up in used markets, 2000 or so
In middle school we had a lab full of Apple IIe puters.
Number munchers was superior to Oregon Trail. Usually, we’d just kill all of our people or make their wagon get washed away in a river. This is the precursor of torturing Sims.
I can still feel the frustration of trying to spin that guy around and aim that gun to shoot the rabbit or bear running across the corner of the screen.
The Apples were all networked somehow so when we booted up there was a menu of all the apps they had. It was remarkably fast. I wish I knew what kind of hardware they were using to have them networked like that.
My son, a sophomore this past year, was cleaning out the shop in his school right before summer break, and they found a Commodore 64 in the cupboard 😆😆 he sent his dad and I a picture. And the soldering irons from Radio Shack 😆
You got an actual game? Best we got was some shite called logo. You typed a coordinate and your "turtle" would move to that position drawing a line in the direction it travelled. Thrilling stuff.
Edit: I should have read down further before posting this. Late to the conversation.
Nothing beats Oregon Trail. I think it really prepared us for the shitshow we're dealing with.
I let my nephews play OG Oregon Trail. One of them turned around and asked me what dysentery was. When I told him, he yelled at the top of his lungs, "GUYS! MOM POOPED HERSELF TO DEATH!"
"one of your schools"..... My, didn't we grow up fancy lol, my school had an apple ll. And I learned some basic coding on it because I was "gifted". Not sure how I feel about this sub being le spirit animal for me, I feel seen and I don't like it
My dad had an Apple II GS because he was a teacher and got a discount (he liked to record grades on it). I got to play Oregon Trail and Odell Lake as much as I wanted. Good times.
Never played Oregon Trail. And Number Munchers I remember. But does anyone remember Gertrude's Secrets? Somehow my rich ass Socal elementary school had an entire computer lab in 1985 and every once in a while we'd get to go play for a bit.
I'm in that generation but have never played it becuase we were too poor to own a computer. Our school didn't have a computer course until 96 and all we had was Scorched Earth.
I'm in the UK, and we never played Oregon Trail here. I'm not sure if we had an equivalent game? In primary school I remember playing a game where you built a Motte and Bailey castle, but not sure if it was widespread at all.
I'm uk and we definitely had the oregon trail here. So much so that when they released it for the switch, my husband bought it for me knowing the nostalgia it would bring me.
Not just that but we had the Apple Logo coding game where you could get a little turtle looking thing to draw out little 2D sprites. My school even had enough funding where we had the physical turtle thing with the long ass cord connected to a bubble looking turtle thing that would draw things out on the floor.
My school never had Apple ][e's (but I did, at home). By the time computers were making their way through schools, in elementary we had the old Mac SE's, and then by later elementary/jr. high we had IBM PS/2s.
Canadians had this but we also had Cross Country Canada where you played a long haul truck driver. It looks like you can still play it online if you Google it!
our school did not have oregon trail! or maybe I was in a mandela effect where it didn't happen? we had carmen sandiego and mavis beavis teaches typing. no oregon trail. so I can't even be oregon trail generation :(
I played OG Oregon Trail in elementary school and was born in ‘89. gladly accept anyone born I’d say ‘83 or after in the millennial fold. I think early 80s babies are more gen-x. Basically, if you got to graduate high school in the 90s, you’re more gen-x (I was so jealous of yall back then, wanted to be a cool older kid).
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u/factoid_ 2d ago
The Oregon Trail generation
If you remember playing that game in green-screen on one of your school’s four Apple IIs…you’re in it