Northfield, Minnesota. – “The Oregon Trail,” one of the most successful computer games of all time and a staple for children in the 1980s and 1990s, is currently being developed into a movie project.
Bill Hyneman says it’s hard to find someone these days who hasn’t heard of “The Oregon Trail.” Computer game He co-created it in 1971 at Carleton College in Northfield It has sold tens of millions of copies and is in the World Video Game Hall of Fame.
“It’s amazing, fun and humbling, in a way, that a small thing that I spent two weeks on has become a global phenomenon,” Heinemann said.
The idea came about when Don Rawitsch, a friend of Heineman’s, created a board game for students he was teaching that simulated 19th-century settlers heading west on the Oregon Trail.
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Computers were in their early days, and although Heinemann says he had only seen “Pac-Man,” he sensed an opportunity.
“I said, ‘This would be a great computer application, because you wouldn’t have to roll the dice to see what would happen,'” Heinemann said. “What happens may come and be unexpected.”
The game became known for the many ways players could die, including from dysentery, but Heinemann’s favorite method was death by snake bite.
“It only happened once every few hundred times, so people could be playing it for months and suddenly, ‘What?’ I was bitten by a snake and died? “This has never happened to me before!” he said.
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Now, more than 50 years after the first “Oregon Trail,” Apple is reportedly developing the game into an action comedy.
“It’s amazing to me how popular it has become and how much interest there has been in it,” Heineman said. “This is just the next step I think.”
He won’t make any money from the movie. In fact, Heinemann never saw a dime of the famous game.
He and two co-creators, Rawitsch and Paul Dillenberger, delivered the device to the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium shortly after its invention.
Heinemann says that doesn’t bother him.
“I didn’t do it for the money,” he added. “I did it just for the love of the game and the love of teaching.”
Heinemann spent most of his career in software. He says he always enjoys it when people tell him how much they love the game.
