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Friday, November 4, 2011

What I Learned from Oregon Trail



As a young lad in the mid 90s I spent many a computer class playing Oregon Trail, a game that shaped the piece-of-shit human being I am today.  Upon revisiting the game where frontiers blazing west during the gold rush, I remember one reason that it was so fun:  Meat is a free and endless resource, so kill whatever the fuck you want. 

One of my favorite Oregon Trail activities was hunting.  As the man of the family, you must conquer the plains and gather nutritious protein for your lazy wife and two beautiful daughters, Shaquille O'Neil and Tupac. I never accounted for that Mary, my other daughter, because she was a sucker to dysentery.  After twenty minutes of methodically murdering proud majestic wildlife, my family had more than enough dead animals to fill their gullet.  I strategized that killing several buffaloes might "trim the heard" of fellow wagoners and leave more gold for me when I arrived to the West.  Then, once I had all the gold, I could ditch my nagging wife and buy a fancy european covered-wagon.  Also, if I found some BBQ sauce, I'd eat like a king for weeks. Maybe I'd attract some animals and my wife would die of snakebite--the possibilities were endless.  As I went to fill my wagon with buff carcass, I read the following dialogue box:

"You have killed 40,000 lbs.  You can take 300 lbs."

300 lbs?  And I'm allowed to kill 40,000?  What the is that?  I wasted my gun powder so the rest of these freeloaders could take my kill.  I bought that gun powder from Matt's General Store, and lord knows those cheap pricks aren't running a charity.  Why can I execute animals for nothing?  It would be one thing if we had honey mustard or something, but now all this delicious meat goes to the next guy.

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