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canopic jug [soylentnews.org] writes:

Developer and reverse engineer, Scott Percival, took a long look at a bug in the Oregon Trail game's river crossings [moral.net.au].

If you're into retro computing, you probably know about Oregon Trail; a simulation of the hardships faced by a group of colonists in 1848 as they travel by covered wagon from Independence Missouri to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. The game was wildly successful in the US education market, with the various editions selling 65 million copies. What you probably don't know is the game's great untold secret.

Two years ago, Twitch streamer albrot [twitch.tv] discovered a bug in the code for crossing rivers. One of the options is to "wait to see if conditions improve"; waiting a day will consume food but not recalculate any health conditions, granting your party immortality.

Whether the game depicts an adventure or an invasion depends on perspective. The original Oregon Trail video game from the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC [google.com]) for the Apple II series took on a life of its own and grew and changed over several decades.

Previously:
(2024) Apple is Turning The Oregon Trail into a Movie [soylentnews.org]
(2016) "You have died of dysentery" -- The Oregon Trail in Computer Class [soylentnews.org]

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