The Oregon Trail handheld game is the version of the childhood game you were waiting to bust out while sitting at awkward dinner parties. It’s too big to slide in your pocket (unless you want to keep the nostalgia going and drop them in a pair on Jnco’s). But, it has a vintage Apple computer inspired design including a floppy disc slot power button.
The handheld is basically an amalgamation of the other versions. The directional pad is known to be wonky – it makes for the hunting mini-game more difficult than it was on a computer. The screen is crisp for its size and in color. This is apparently closer to the colorful DOS version on the Apple II version. The gameplay is still exciting if you haven’t played it in years. It’s tense watching you’re food amount deplete as you have watch you’re 8-bit ox side scroll by. I can’t imagine the developers could foresee that nearly five decades later – especially in an era of virtual reality metaverses.
Getting your hands on one
They were a Target exclusive back in 2018 for $25 but you should be able to find a used one on ebay for around that price. You too can refresh BrickSeek a few times to see if they may restock them four years later: https://brickseek.com/target-inventory-checker?sku=087-10-2886
Other options
- Play it online for free: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_The_1990. It’s the full game including the blaring, nostalgic music. It plays smoothly on a pc. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the game to work on my android phone in both mobile and desktop versions on my phone (the emulator wasn’t responsive to my frustrated clicking).
- Sadly, there is no official phone app yet. There is an Oregon Trail handheld game adjacent app called “Organ Trail” on Google Play and the App Store for $2.99
Verdict
The pc option has more responsive controls but you’re playing on a modern machine. Wouldn’t you rather choose a button smashing brick to ford a river while sprawled out on a couch?