"The Oregon Trail" in other countries.

[Recusant]

For those who don't know, nearly every American below the age of 35 or so is familiar the abovementioned video game, having been exposed to it in school (unless they've stopped doing that; school ended a long time ago for me, and all the wealth of the world couldn't coax me back in). I'm not sure when it started, but as computers grew ever more widespread, more and more school districts brought this title in, presumably to teach kids about the realities of life in one of the US's great migratory periods. In practice, it mostly amounted to teaching kids how to leave goofy epitaphs and shoot way, way too many bison; but there's also a large number out there for whom it was their first real introduction to video games.

Now, I assume that computers were also spreading through other parts of the world at the same time, but it would be very silly to have kids in say, Spain playing a video game about something a bunch of people three thousand miles and a dozen decades away did. So my question is: for those of you raised in other countries, did you have something similar? If so, what was it?

 

[vledleR]

We had The Trail Collection in my school in Vancouver BC, included Oregon, Yukon, Amazon, and African. My favourite was Amazon; it was definitely the most difficult, but it was probably the most educational as well. If memory serves correct you had to examine the different species of fish, animals, and plants to determine which ones were edible. You could also time travel and trade with T.R. Roosevelt, which was pretty awesome.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Never played it. Never even heard about it til now.

 

[Doom972]

I once found an LP of it on YouTube and played the newest Windows version of it shortly after. I was very surprised at how good it was for an educational game. I wish some modern survival-themed games would take notes from it.

I'm from Israel and unfortunately we don't have anything that resembles Oregon Trail. We do have our own educational games, but nothing that comes close to it as far as I know.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

I think I had a similar one called Gold Rush or something, based in the Australian outback during the Gold Rush (hence the name).

 

[OneCatch]

We had Oregon Trail in my school. But the main one when I was in Junior school (ages 7-11) was a top-down game where you played a badger and had to survive:


And it was pretty brutal for an educational game - you'd get killed by dogs, shot by farmers, poisoned, drowned, run-over, and then you'd be scolded by quite a severe sounding narrator for fucking it up.
Getting run over would occur in a scripted sequence if you did tried to cross the road too early in the story - I'm pretty sure my hatred of overly scripted games stems from that fucking scripted car.

 

[leberkaese]

I think Oregon Trail was played all around the world. Because it's a good game, aside from its potential learning stuff. Also, kids have to learn about the history of every important country in the world and therefore I don't see any reason why this game shouldn't be played in other parts of the world.

Also... I'm german and I wasn't even allowed to play games about my country's past. Really! They didn't sell Wolfenstein here.
Now on a more serious note: I had some educational games, but they were all subpar. It's rare for an educational game to be as memorable as Oregon Trail. Only thing I remember from these games is one where a bunch of dormouses sang about the animals in our forrests.

 

[Rayce Archer]

I think Oregon Trail was played all around the world. Because it's a good game, aside from its potential learning stuff. Also, kids have to learn about the history of every important country in the world and therefore I don't see any reason why this game shouldn't be played in other parts of the world.

Also... I'm german and I wasn't even allowed to play games about my country's past. Really! They didn't sell Wolfenstein here.
Now on a more serious note: I had some educational games, but they were all subpar. It's rare for an educational game to be as memorable as Oregon Trail. Only thing I remember from these games is one where a bunch of dormouses sang about the animals in our forrests.

Were you allowed to play Darklands? Because that's an actual RPG set in historic Germany, and it's awesome. You can become a knight and if you learn Latin you can hunt witches*. It's a lot like a medieval Fallout.

*because you can tell when they're performing a backwards satanic mass, of course

 

[L. Declis]

I know about it, but only in the sense that it's a famous American game and therefore, in the West, all gamers know of it via that. Like how all gamers know that Ocarina of Time is the best Zelda but everyone prefer Majora's Mask, and the earlier Resident Evils are better.

Just one of those things we pick up. (UK, by the way)

 

[leberkaese]

Were you allowed to play Darklands? Because that's an actual RPG set in historic Germany, and it's awesome. You can become a knight and if you learn Latin you can hunt witches*. It's a lot like a medieval Fallout.

*because you can tell when they're performing a backwards satanic mass, of course

Never heard of this game, but I highly highly doubt that it is forbidden here. Wolfenstein wasn't allowed because it contains Swastika and a high level of violence. *g*

 

[Raggedstar]

I owned Amazon and Oregon Trail at home (3rd edition for both), though preferred Amazon. You travel from the Amazon's mouth in Brazil to it's very heart in Peru. You learn about the native people, animals, plants, and various historical figures like Henry Ford and Teddy Rosevelt (you save him and his son, who's underwear I think was eaten by some creature). I enjoyed it, though we never played these in school.

I'm a Canadian from the 90s, so we played Cross Country Canada. It's similar to Oregon Trail, but you play a trucker delivering stuff across the country. It's...not very good (I played the early 90s version that played on DOS) and it's by no means as iconic as Oregon Trail. You can only eat by going to a diner instead of shooting a million beavers, deer, or geese.

 

[Dimitriov]

Canadian here. And while I'm certainly familiar with Oregon Trail here we played Cross Country Canada in school. And as far as I'm concerned that game was amazing. You drive a truck all over the country picking up goods to transport to some other city. It was and is an amazingly good way to learn geography (of Canada in this case obviously).

There was no dying of dysentery though, but if you didn't asleep and eat properly you were pretty much guaranteed to crash.

 

[zegram33]

well, I'd never heard of it until I say starkid were making a musical of it.
so id say Europeans...probably not?

 

[soren7550]

In my schooling years, Oregon Trail was played all of twice at best.

The first time was in elementary school, and was a version that used crappy live action actors as the townsfolk and potential caravan-mates. Dunno if the actual game was any good, as I never got out of the town, and we never played the game again.

Second time many years later (as in high school) we got to play the Oregon Trail that most would be more familiar with. Seeing as I was the only one that actually knew anything about the actual Oregon Trail, I was able to use my knowledge to get further than anyone else (you have to leave in March for one). But, this was a one off thing, and we never played it again.

Closest I've been to playing it again was the GaiaOnline minigame they had a few years back where you had to get your airship from one place to another. Never managed to beat it since in order to advance, you had to shoot 200 or so pounds of food in every hunting game, and after the first two levels it got ridiculously hard because the animals to hunt got so scarce and small.

Saw Oregon Trail for the 3DS in a GameStop once, dunno if it's any good or not though.

 

[Muspelheim]

I do remember a game called Svea Rike being used in education now and then. They played it in class in some schools, but pretty much any kid with a PC could get a copy.

It was an educational strategy game based on Swedish history, where you choose the noble house you belong to and manage the province you're given. I think it began at 1523 and lasted until 1818, and the goal was getting as many points as possible through trade and war and the likes. Both the main game and the battles were turnbased. It was a rather Spartan game, but it gave an awful lot of tools and mechanics to the player for a kid-oriented game.

I think it's rather amusing as a kidgame compared to Oregon Trail. There was less dysentry involved, but I did get murdered in Stockholm by revolutionaries once when I played exceptionally bad.

Fun fact; the studio that developed it eventually became Paradox Interactive. Svea Rike is technically the first game in the Europa Universalis/Crusader Kings suite.

I never heard of Oregon Trail until goons started LP'ing it, though. Probably didn't travel well outside the anglosphere.

 

[Rayce Archer]

Were you allowed to play Darklands? Because that's an actual RPG set in historic Germany, and it's awesome. You can become a knight and if you learn Latin you can hunt witches*. It's a lot like a medieval Fallout.

*because you can tell when they're performing a backwards satanic mass, of course

Never heard of this game, but I highly highly doubt that it is forbidden here. Wolfenstein wasn't allowed because it contains Swastika and a high level of violence. *g*

Reminds me of the whitewashing Company of Heroes got- in the base game, US soldiers would make cracks like "Watch out! I hear the Nazis are all 10 feet tall!" and the Wehrmacht infantry would grumble that "I'd like to see Herr Goring come down here and shoot these Yankees." All mention of Nazis or the Nazi party was excised from the international version, as I learned when I installed a UK copy of Opposing Fronts. This had the unintended consequence, however, of making it seem like America and England were just fighting Germans for no goddamn reason.

 

[Dalisclock]

Were you allowed to play Darklands? Because that's an actual RPG set in historic Germany, and it's awesome. You can become a knight and if you learn Latin you can hunt witches*. It's a lot like a medieval Fallout.

*because you can tell when they're performing a backwards satanic mass, of course

Never heard of this game, but I highly highly doubt that it is forbidden here. Wolfenstein wasn't allowed because it contains Swastika and a high level of violence. *g*

I've heard that the german versions of many games are heavily altered due to strict censorship laws there. One story I remember from back in the day is that the german version of C&C had killed soldiers shedding oil instead of blood and make metallic/robotic sounds because it's okay to kill robots but not humans. Have you seen this or is that just a rumor?

 

[chuckman1]

They stopped doing that and I have always wanted to play but never found a way.
Maybe it's in some other state but Arizona education sucks.
Is there any free way to play the game?

USA, I always assume people on the internet are from here. Because I'm nationally self centered.

 

[leberkaese]

I've heard that the german versions of many games are heavily altered due to strict censorship laws there. One story I remember from back in the day is that the german version of C&C had killed soldiers shedding oil instead of blood and make metallic/robotic sounds because it's okay to kill robots but not humans. Have you seen this or is that just a rumor?

Yes, Germany is pretty heavy against violence in games. The old Command & Conquer games were completely ruined by this. It made no sense at all that you had cyborgs as units in the old Red Alert games.
Violence is one big issue in games here. Another problem is the use of "anticonstitutional symbols", meaning the Swastika. For example, this had to be changed in the german version of the recent South Park game.

There also some more recent games than C&C that have been heavily altered because of violence. In Fallout 3 we don't have those splatter effects and exploding bodyparts. Saint's Row 2 has been completely altered and is practically unbearable in the german version. In Saint's Row 3 you can't use civilians as human shields (SR4 hasn't been changed at all. Probably because it belongs to a german company now...). Another infamous example of censoring in games is Half-Life: Killed scientists and civilians don't die. They sit down on the ground and shake their heads in grief.

Also we didn't get some games here because they were considered too violent. Some older examples are Wolfenstein 3D or Goldeneye 64. A more recent example is Gears of War that hasn't been released here.

The problem overall: german politicians obviously are regarding videogames as toys for kids. Violence and display of anticonstitutional symbols in movies and other media is completely fine, but not in games.
But this seems to lift in the recent years. There are more and more german game developers (Crytek - Crysis and Farcry 1, Yager - Spec Ops: The Line, Daedalic with all its Point&Click etc.) and the big publisher Deep Silver (Metro, Saint's Row, Dead Island) and it seems like videogames are now considered a more adult thing.


Also, sorry @OP for turning this into a discussion about censored games in Germany!