Westward Ho! 1847
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In Westward Ho! you are the head of a family of five setting out from Independence, Missouri, in the spring of 1847 on the Oregon Trail. Your objective is to arrive safely in Oregon City, Oregon.
Having saved about $420 you must purchase a wagon for $70, and with the remaining money you must also buy enough equipment, supplies, and livestock to sustain you on your strenuous 2000-mile journey. As you travel, you encounter the same hazards and conditions that American pioneers faced during the Great Migration: wagon fires, polluted water, wild animals, bad weather, illness, and topographical obstacles. The following hints will help you on the Trail:- In Independence you decide how much of your money to spend on the things you need for the trip. You can spend all of your money there, but if you do, you will not be able to buy supplies at forts along the way.
- The trip is divided into two-week segments. Between segments you have an opportunity to stop and hunt for game. Hunting may augment your food supply, but it always consumes valuable time.
- At the beginning of the game, you are asked to rank your shooting (typing) ability. When you are hunting or being attacked by hostile Indians, you are asked to type a word that sounds like a gunshot; the faster you type it, the more likely you are to hit your target. Of course, not all Indians that approach your wagon are hostile, and shooting at friendly Indians costs you time and ammunition.
If you make the correct decisions along the way, you and your family will join the hundreds of thousands of pioneers who settled and developed the land west of the Rockies. If you prepare poorly or if you make foolish decisions, your bones will serve as a warning to those who come after you on the Oregon Trail. Good luck!
Westward Ho! 1847 download code: 3S453MND9V
Westward Ho! 1847 was written in 1986 by David Ahl for his book BASIC Computer Adventures. It is a faithful clone of the original Oregon Trail and therefore its story begins with that game.
In 1971 Dan Rawitsch was pursuing a teaching degree in Minnesota, U.S.A. and part of his studies included teaching an actual middle school class (the first couple years of secondary school for you Brits). Rawitsch planned on making a board game for his U.S. history students to learn about the Oregon trail. His roommates at the time were computer programmers and the state had just bought a new HP 2000 timeshare computer system for its schools, so they suggested a computer game instead of a board game. Over the course of two weeks Dan Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger wrote the original Oregon program and it was a big hit at Rawitsch's school. Rawitsch was later hired by MECC - a state corporation formed to promote computer literacy in schools - and revised the game to be more historically accurate, then ported it to BASIC. It became very popular in the state school system and was licensed to educators nationwide. If you know an American who had access to a school computer from the 1970s through the year 2000, there is a decent chance they played Oregon or a derivative at least once.
In 1977 Rawitsch published the BASIC source code in David Ahl's Creative Computing magazine, which helped make the game even more popular. As the home computer market opened up, clones proliferated. In 1985, MECC released a bestselling Apple ][ remake also titled The Oregon Trail, featuring colour graphics. When most people think of The Oregon Trail, they are thinking of the 1985 "classic" version. MECC was bought by the Learning Company which released sequels in the 1990s. The series - the oldest active computer game series - changed hands a couple more times and is currently owned by Harper Collins, with Gameloft releasing titles since the 2000s. The most recent remake was released in 2022.
Although source code for the 1975 and 1977 versions of The Oregon Trail are available online, and the 1977 version may have been released without a copyright notice, the program was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office in 1979 and thus is not free to use. Additionally, The Oregon Trail is a registered trademark of Harper Collins. Therefore I chose to port David Ahl's 1985 game, Westward Ho! 1847, which he dedicated to the public domain in 2022. He hopes his work will be used for educational and historic purposes rather than personal gain, and I think my port satisfies that criteria.
For the interested, Mr. Ahl published the source code to five or so similar games in his book, which is now available online for free.
~Max
- In Independence you decide how much of your money to spend on the things you need for the trip. You can spend all of your money there, but if you do, you will not be able to buy supplies at forts along the way.