Talk:The Oregon Trail (1985 video game)

Some proposed changes to the intro of the article

Information to be added or removed: Rewriting of the intro to more clearly explain the role of the 1985 product within the broader history of The Oregon Trail game.

Explanation of issue: I propose to refocus the intro on what are probably the two main reasons for the article: 1) To clearly identify how this second-generation version is different from the first generation. 2) To provide a brief history of how and why this new generation was created.

References supporting change: There are two very helpful references (although please note that I wrote both of them). One of these is already listed in the References -- my Medium article from June 29, 2017 (“How I Managed to Design...”). The other reference is “A Brief History of the Oregon Trail Game” (http://www.died-of-dysentery.com/stories/brief-history.html).

Suggested text: Perhaps something like the following two paragraphs --

The Oregon Trail is a computer game for the Apple II developed by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) and first released in 1985. It was designed to teach students about the realities of 19th-century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail. In the game, the player assumes the role of a wagon leader guiding a party of settlers from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon's Willamette Valley via a covered wagon in 1848. The software was designed and created by an internal team at MECC, led by R. Philip Bouchard, who also served as the principal designer of the product. Although the 1985 product was originally created for the Apple II computer only, an essentially identical version was later released for DOS. Augmented versions for Windows and Mac (using a mouse-based interface) were released in the early 1990s.

The 1985 product is the second major incarnation of the game known as The Oregon Trail, loosely based on the 1971 text-only game and its direct descendants. The 1985 version was the first in the Oregon Trail series to include such features as crossing rivers, stopping at landmarks, naming your party members, contracting dysentery and other diseases, carrying meat back to the wagon, choosing a profession, carrying spare parts, seeing daily weather updates, talking to people along the way, having members of your party die, erecting tombstones, and earning points based on your performance. This was also the version that introduced the iconic animation of an ox pulling a wagon across the landscape, as well as the first version to be sold as a stand-alone product under the title The Oregon Trail.

Further explanation: Notice that the first three sentences above are taken from the existing intro (with only tiny changes). After that the text is new. The three existing sentences include tags that could be retained.

Final comments: I am pleased to see that this article exists, and that it contains some very good content. Because of my history with The Oregon Trail, I am in a position to shed a great deal of light on the subject. However, because of my obvious conflict-of-interest, I want to tread lightly in making my suggestions. I hope to make additional suggestions quite soon, but first I want to see how this first one is received.

Filbo (talk) 22:38, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Pinging @PresN, Bumm13, and Izno: for their input on this request. To paraphrase the request above, I believe that the main issue is the lead paragraph, which currently lists the names of the developers of the 1971 game. The requestor is asking if it could instead list the developers of the 1985 video game in the lead section, as this article is ostensibly about that version. Many thanks for any input you can offer, and my apologies for the ping if any of you are already watchlisted for this page. Regards,  Spintendo  23:52, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Ah, yeah, at one point this article (as The Oregon Trail) covered both the 1985 and 1971 versions, mixing them poorly. I split out the 1971 version to The Oregon Trail (1971 video game) a year ago and rewrote it top to bottom (@Filbo:, if you didn't see it), but never did a full cleanup pass on this article, though it's still on my backlog to rewrite. I agree with Filbo's general thrust, for sure, and I certainly agree that the lead would be much better if it focused a bit more on the details of the 1985 game, including the developers specific to this version. I'll give it a poke. --PresN 04:24, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Ok, I didn't use Filbo's text directly, but took some of it as a base to rewrite the lead so that it now focuses on the 1985 version, gives credit to the designer, and references the 1971 version mainly in terms of how things were changed or added to. The rest of the article is still a bit of a mess, but if I do get around to rewriting it I'll definitely pull from Filbo's Medium article again! --PresN 04:43, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Notes

Some proposed changes to the Development section

Many thanks to the editors for considering and acting on my suggestions regarding the intro. Now I would like to recommend certain changes to the subsections currently named “Graphical version” and “GUI versions”.

Additional Source to Cite

I believe that the editors may find the follow source to be quite useful: “A Brief History of the Oregon Trail Game” (http://www.died-of-dysentery.com/stories/brief-history.html)

Full disclosure: I wrote the article. The value of the article is that it approaches the history of The Oregon Trail game in the form of a timeline, dividing the history into three principal generations.

Comments on the Section “Graphical version”

I suggest renaming this section “1985 Apple II version”. In the first sentence, the phrase “to make a graphical version” does not accurately reflect the team’s mandate. The actual mandate was to re-imagine the game as a much more elaborate product than the original, suitable for sale in the home market. This was the first version ever to be sold as a stand-alone product, and the first to be sold under the name “The Oregon Trail”. (See the “Brief History” article for details.) The upshot is that most of the features that people associate with the “original” version of the game were actually first introduced in 1985.

I suggest adding a brief new paragraph at the end of this section, mentioning the first DOS version, which was released in 1990. This version was essentially a clone of the Apple II version – but because of differences in how the Apple II and early DOS products displayed graphics, the images in the two products look slightly different.

Comments on the Section “GUI versions”

I suggest renaming this section “Mouse-based versions”. It would be helpful to specifically identify the three principal mouse-based versions – for B&W Mac (1991), for DOS (“Oregon Trail Deluxe” in 1992), and Windows (1993).

Correct Categorization of Products into First vs. Second Generation

The first generation of The Oregon Trail game – that is, the products derived from the original 1971 version – lasted for a full 14 years. This generation included not only the first Apple II version (included as OREGON in “Elementary Volume 6”), but also the Atari, Radio Shack, and Commodore versions (included as OREGON in “Expeditions”). MECC never ported the 1985 Apple II design to these 3 machines. In fact, the only direct port that MECC ever did was the DOS version of 1990. (Note: I once thought that MECC had also ported the design to Commodore, but this turned out to be untrue.)

Filbo (talk) 16:49, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Reply 8-AUG-2019

  Clarification requested  

• To expedite your request, please provide the desired claims in the form of verbatim statements which can then be added to the article (if approved) by the reviewer. Exact, verbatim descriptions of any text to be removed should also be described. Finally, the exact location where the desired claims are to be placed should be mentioned, as shown in the example below.

Edit request example

Please remove the third sentence from the second paragraph of the Sun section: "The Sun's diameter is estimated to be approximately 25 miles in length." Please add the following claim as the third sentence of the second paragraph of the Sun section: "The Sun's diameter is estimated to be approximately 864,337 miles in length." Using as the reference: Paramjit Harinath (2019). The Sun. Academic Press. p. 1.

• Kindly open a new edit request at your earliest convenience when ready to proceed with the verbatim text and the placement locations.

Regards,  Spintendo  19:07, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

References

Thanks for clarifying the proper procedure!

I had been worried that as a person with an obvious conflict of interest, perhaps I should only offer general suggestions rather than specific text. This clarification from @Spintendo on the correct protocol was quite helpful. I will follow up soon with more specific suggestions. Thanks! Also many thanks to @PresN for his past and ongoing work on this article and the related articles. Filbo (talk) 21:18, 9 August 2019 (UTC)