Oregon Trail Hand Held Review Target Exclusive

If you are not old enough to have experienced Oregon Trail in computer class, then I am sorry. You are living a life that is not complete. Thanks to Basic Fun, the manufacturer of this new hand held, that is exclusive to Target, you can fix this deficit in your life. The cool thing is, it will only set you back less than $30 after sales tax in just about every state in America. That is less than $30 for a complete, all in one, product that plays one of the best games ever conceived for computers – yes Oregon Trail is better than Doom in many respects.

First, this is sort of an upgraded version of the game that originally launched in the mid 1970’s. Graphically, we are talking around the Commodore 64/Nintendo Entertainment System era (mid to late 1980’s). That is not anything to be concerned with, just suffice to say that this is graphically a great looking game and one that gets the point across.

The original Oregon Trail was created by three people, Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger with the intent of teaching school children the realities of 19^th-centure pioneer life on the Oregon Trail. The goal was to effectively bring to life the words from the school books. Yes folks, this was one of the first edutainment titles to be released. For some reason, it is also one of the few actual good edutainment titles available (talk about a genre not expanding and getting better with time).

The Target exclusive version of The Oregon Trail is an all in one unit. Everything you need is included in the case. They even throw in batteries which is cool of them. In case you want to be prepared for the inevitable day that those batteries die, just keep three AA batteries around and you are set.

There are several commands and such in The Oregon Trail that required input from you as you progressed. These commands only amounted to a handful of keys on the cluttered keyboard of your computer. This handheld brings the most critical keys to the forefront streamlining your experience with The Oregon Trail.

There is a Yes and No button, an Enter key, wagon button, audio button (multiple presses raises the volume till it turns off and starts low again with another click), and then there are the directional buttons. The directional buttons are for selecting choices in menus (pressing the Enter key accepts the choice), the diagonal buttons are only used when hunting for food, so you can easily shoot at an angle. Finally, there is the power button.

 

The power button is shaped to resemble a floppy disk sticking out of the disc drive in an old computer. How cool is that? Even better, they used the same style button mechanism for the power button as was used in computers back in the day. That sound you are hearing when pressing the power button is nostalgic because it is authentic, and it rocks.

If only the screen were bigger. It is a 1 ½ inch tall by 2-inch color LCD screen.

 

 

 

 

Yes, the biggest problem with The Oregon Trail game is the screen. Unfortunately, this is also the biggest hindrance to enjoying the game. Such a small screen makes it tough to read all the small text that is in this game. Seriously, don’t play The Oregon Trail late at night and when you are sleepy, you will fall asleep and quick. The screen is bright and sharp though, so we are not dealing with a screen like what Nintendo put into the original Game Boy hand held. No, the screen in The Oregon Trail, while small, is quite good and does do its job. I just wish they could have gone with something another half inch or even full inch bigger all around – there is certainly room for such expansion (at least left and right).

 

The build quality of The Oregon Trail is great. While light, it doesn’t feel like you are going to break it if you dropped it. The buttons all have a nice thick springy feel to them – nothing squishy, rather there is some oomph powering these buttons when you press them. That is great in my opinion. These are not soft buttons to push like you find on home console controllers.

 

 

Okay, now that we have all the even slightly negative stuff out of the way, let’s discuss the good stuff.

There is a lot going on in The Oregon Trail. You start out by naming your party members, picking their professions (each has bonuses and hindrances), buying supplies and finally picking the month that your party will set out on their journey (again, each has bonuses and hindrances attached).

Do you go for more ammunition, choosing to “live off the land” or do you forgo ammunition in hopes that your initial food purchase will see you through (effectively avoiding arguably the most popular part of The Oregon Trail game)? Do you buy additional wagon parts early, or wait and hope you make it to the next post before needing them? These choices will haunt you as your play The Oregon Trail, and haunt you more as your progress – almost taunting you for not making the right choice.

As you travel the trail you will come across locals, forts, hunting opportunities, diseases, and more. Just like you did in the computer version all those years ago in computer class. As I have said already, this is effectively the computer game in your hand, contained in one unit for easy play. You cannot go wrong with this one if you are even remotely a fan of the game. Seriously.

My last experience with this game was probably 1987 or so in computer class. That was the last year that I was in “computer class” before entering “typing class” which was still done on the same computers, but the work was less open for us to have “fun time” during class where we could play games like The Oregon Trail. They had a whole new set of edutainment games for us to spend our time with – “games” that had us typing letters and even words (long before Typing of the Dead) to shoot enemies or remove portions of an obstruction or similar activity. The core was learning key placement and such – no longer could we go to computer class and leave an hour later discussing how far we made it on the Oregon Trail, how many members of our party survived/died, how they died, discussing how long it took before someone dissed Terry and died, etc. My childhood was gone so to speak.

For me, the Target exclusive Oregon Trail game is just that. My childhood, a simpler time, in a hand-held device that I can take with me. Something I can whip out for a few minutes of play while waiting for a client to show up, or just to pass time waiting for my wife to finish shopping at the umpteenth clothing store that weekend.

This is literally The Oregon Trail game in your hand and playable on the go without a laptop, or crappy emulator for your cell phone. That alone is worth the price of admission in my opinion.

Want to grab a unit for yourself but no Target nearby? Check eBay.