- On the Trail of the Oregon Trail, Part 1 (filfre.net)
I recently got a copy of 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. It’s not really a very good book, for reasons that are interesting on their own and that I hope to talk about in another post very soon. Right now, though, I want to talk about the very first entry in the book, on The Oregon Trail, because that entry sent me down a rabbit hole from which I have only just emerged, blinking and reconsidering the history of interactive narrative.
- 1971: The Oregon Trail (if50.substack.com)
In the midst of the cold but snowless Minnesota December of 1971, a student teacher named Don Rawitsch wheeled a bulky teletypewriter into his 8th grade history class. Students gathered around curiously as he plugged in power and phone cables, switched on the humming machine, and dialed the number on a rotary pad that would connect him to a $100,000 minicomputer fifty miles away. The students, Mr. Rawitsch said, were going to play a game.
- Oregon Trail Mainframe (archive.org)
A conversion of Oregon Trail to Applesoft BASIC, created by Chris Torrence in April 2015, from the original 1975 source code uploaded by Jimmy Maher
- Chuck Jones - The Evolution of an Artist (YouTube)
If you grew up watching Looney Tunes, then you know Chuck Jones, one of all-time masters of visual comedy. Normally I would talk about his ingenious framing and timing, but not today. Instead, I’d like to explore the evolution of his sensibilities as an artist. To see the names of the films, press the CC button and select “Movie Titles.”