GenXers and elder millennials, rejoice – or maybe don’t: An Oregon Trail movie is on the way from Apple.
Billed as an “action comedy,” it’s been confirmed to The Register that Apple’s film studio has accepted a pitch from duo Will Speck and Josh Gordon to direct the film. The movie will be based on the classic computer game where countless schoolchildren in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s forded rivers, shot bison, and inevitably died of dysentery before (probably not) making it to Oregon City.
Created in 1971 by Minnesota schoolteachers looking for a way to engage their students in the history of the overland route from Missouri across the unsettled American West, the game saw broad release after the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC – also responsible for genX/millennial grade school edutainment classics like Number Munchers and the Secret Island of Dr Quandary) released an updated version in 1974.
The game has gone through many incarnations over the years, and Apple is closely linked to the most popular version, released in 1985 for the Apple II. That version of the game is still playable online on multiple websites and is downloadable as freeware.
For those unfamiliar with the Oregon Trail itself, it was a 2,170-mile (c 3,500 km) route traveled by hundreds of thousands of settlers who opted to head west to the Oregon territory to make their fortunes, with most travelers hitting the trail from the 1840s through the late 1860s.
A map of the Oregon Trail, as shown in the 1985 Apple II release of the game – click to enlarge
The trail was rough, and between threats from disease, weather, wild animals, river crossings, and other dangers, it’s believed as many as 10 percent of those who undertook the journey never reached the end of the trail.
The grim nature of the real Oregon Trail was reflected in the game of the same title, as anyone who went to school in the US in the 1990s (this vulture included) will tell you, leading to a sort of gallows humor as characters named for friends and family succumbed to the perils of the trail.
- Almost all classic US video games ‘critically endangered’
- Console yourself – research finds gaming may actually boost mental health
- You can now play thousands of classic DOS games on Twitter. Goodbye, productivity
- The Register’s 2023 in gaming had one final boss: Baldur’s Gate 3
That makes the film a natural fit for an action comedy – at least a dark one – but it remains unclear what