Minnesota-made ‘Oregon Trail’ game being adapted into a movie

In recent years, Hollywood has been mining Gen-X and Millennial nostalgia to make movies based on beloved childhood toys and games.

Following the box-office success of Barbie dolls, Lego bricks and Super Mario Bros.’ mushroom-stomping plumbers, Apple is developing an action-comedy based on Minnesota’s own “Oregon Trail,” the Hollywood Reporter announced.

Many middle-aged Minnesotans recall virtually hitching oxen to covered wagons in their school computer labs and crossing the American frontier, fording rivers and breaking axles along the way.

But even uberfans sporting “You have died of dysentery” T-shirts might not realize “Oregon Trail” was created by a trio of computer geeks who pioneered the simulation computer game. Or that it sold tens of millions of copies worldwide to become arguably the most successful and enduring educational game of all time.

“Oregon Trail” was created by three guys finishing up degrees from Northfield’s Carleton College, when they lived together while student teaching in Minneapolis. A City Pages cover story on “Oregon Trail” recounted how Don Rawitsch hoped to teach his history class about westward expansion by mocking up a board game. Roommates Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger came back to the apartment to find Rawitsch sketching a path from Missouri to Oregon, thwarting players with thieves and snake bites along the way.

The trio hatched a plan for Dillenberger and Heinemann to digitize Rawitsch’s “Oregon Trail” by punching code into a teletype machine. When Rawitsch brought the teletype to class, his students were instantly hooked, despite the game’s rudimentary setup.

The screen-less machine printed out prompts (about buying supplies, allocating rations, etc.) on paper, and players punched keys to answer. The program would then select various successes and misfortunes, such as safe river crossings or lost trails. To hunt wild game, the player typed: “BANG.”

After graduation, Rawitsch got a job with the Minnesota Education Computing Consortium (MECC), a statewide program to expand computer access, and upgraded “Oregon Trail.” When MECC licensed its catalog of educational software around the country, the game spread like a prairie brushfire.

Apple has been connected to “Oregon Trail” since the game’s early days, when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak won MECC’s bid to put their new personal computers in schools.

The tech company’s plans for a live-action film reportedly involve Will Speck and Josh Gordon, directors of the slapstick “Blades of Glory,” finding the humorous side of cholera and starvation. Also attached to the project are Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the songwriter/composers known for “La La Land” and “Dear Evan Hanson,” whose musical numbers should improve on the game’s earworm soundtrack of discordant beeps.

In the meantime, try your hand at an early version of “Oregon Trail” at oregontrail.ws.