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LEARNING COMPANY Oregon Trail 5th Edition (Windows/Macintosh) | 
| From: The Learning Company
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $1.79
You Save: $28.16 (94%)
New (11) Used (7) from $1.48
Rating:  32 reviews
Sales Rank: 1190
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows Xp, Mac Os X, Mac Os 9 And Below, Windows 95
Genre: Childrens Social Studies Software
ESRB: Everyone
Media: CD-ROM
Age: 5 - 20 years
Operating System: Windows 2000
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 5 x 5 x 0.5
Model: 772040812751
UPC: 772040812751
EAN: 0772040812751
ASIN: B0000B3E4N
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Make the wise choices as you avoid hazards and face the many challenges of frontier life, and life on the Serengeti Plains | | • | Go hunting, buy the right supplies, talk to Indians and fellow travelers and much more | | • | Along the way you'll discover useful wilderness knowledge like avoiding poison and crossing rivers | | • | Kids will also get to learn the complete story of the Donner Party | | • | Ages 9 and up |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
This best-seller is loved by kids and teachers alike! Builds real-life decision-making and problem-solving skills. Kids get to choose his/her own wagon party, read maps, and guide their team through the wilderness!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 27 more reviews...
 ...a "great learning tool"? Hah, yeah, and I'm not poor. August 2, 2004
A.N. Roman (Hillsboro, OR)
41 out of 91 found this review helpful
I don't know about this fifth edition of The Oregon Trail, but I'm just going to assume it's the same thing as the one I played from kindergarten to sixth grade (1990-1997). If you're a parent looking for an educational game for your kid(s) or someone else's, you can do better than this. Really, in my school, and probably every other school, everyone just played this to do the hunting part. And that doesn't even take up 1/4 of the total game time. Heck, I downloaded the first Mac version just a few days ago to relive my glory. Well, I breezed through it in no less than 15 minutes. There aren't really any "educational" features on this unless you decided to look for them. And by that I mean this: when you make it to a landmark/town/fort/whatever, you can just bypass it and keep making your way to Oregon. Only if you click on the tab "Guide" will you learn a few quick facts. And by that I mean a short paragraph. That's really the only thing you'll learn, something you could easily learn from a history book or on a site.
That's not to say the game isn't fun though, I still like playing through it. Here's what goes on: you and 4 other party members (you can name all 5 characters) buy your goods and make way to Oregon in a covered wagon. If you leave too early, there might not be any grass for the oxen to eat. If you leave too late, you'll arrive in winter, and we all know how that went back in the early days of America *pilgrim corpse falls from a tree*. Though that's just what the game tells you, I always leave the earliest (in March) and nothing bad really happens. So once you leave, you get to see a little ox pulling your covered wagon along the countryside. Usually, it's just grass with the occassional cloud or something. You can hunt at any time when on this screen, which is where most of the fun is. A little aiming crusor appears and then animals run around and you get to bust caps. It's not violent or anything...kinda depressing because they plop down upon impact (no frames of them in the process of falling. One second they're standing, the next frame- they're on the ground). And it's really weird when you kill a bear or two. Because they were probably on their way to the store that had a sale on honey. Poor things. After some traveling, you'll come to forts/townss/landmarks/whatever and you can learn something or trade items with other people if you need anything. And then you'll have to cross rivers. The options here are either walking accross (which is just plain stupid since most of the time t he river's too deep and you'll lose supplies if you take this option), caulking the wagon and floating accross, or taking a ferry for five bucks. Oh, and there's the perverted option of giving an indian 3 sets of clothing to help you accross. Though I bet in the new versions they're called "Native Americans"...dispite coming to America via India/Asia via the landbridge.
Oh, and here's a funny thing: while traveling, your party members will get status conditions like broken legs, exhaustion, snake bites and more. How a snake gets into a friggin' covered wagon is beyond me, but it happens. When this happens, you should rest for a few days or change the rate of how much you eat. Or maybe even change the pace you travel at. But if you don't take care of the character's condition, they'll end up dying. And if you're going for something like that, try naming one of the party members "Disco" so you get the nice message "Disco has died".
All in all, this is a fun game. It's not really educational (I live in Oregon and this thing never taught me anything new aside from that snakes can get into covered wagons and a single bullet can take down a bear regardless of where you shoot it) and anyone can go through it in no time. If you're looking for something to learn about Oregon, I'll tell ya a few things right here:
-we don't have any sales tax when buying anything
-we all don't run around looking for Big Foot
-Short Circuit and The Goonies were filmed here
-WalMat stores are scarce, as people protest them whenever one's about to be built
-it doesn't always rain. In fact, it only really rains during the normal times of the seasons like every other place
-we have the highest murder rate in the country. It's to the point where if one's on the news, they spend 8 seconds on the story, then go into a BREAKING ANNOUNCEMENT about an abusive sloth in a zoo in the Democratic Republic of Congo or something
-I live here, thus making it the best state of all time
There you have it. The Oregon Trail = fun, but that's about it.
 Did not run! August 5, 2006
B. Gum (Northern California, USA)
22 out of 26 found this review helpful
I had really enjoyed other games in the series (in my opinion Oregon Trail 2 is the best because of the many choices for start date/time, start city, and destination), and was really looking forward to this game, but unfortunately, I could not get it to run on my machine (a PC with Windows XP). There was no patch or detailed help readily available, and the online advice I found (after hunting around quite a bit) was not helpful.
Does NOT run on XP July 15, 2007
John L. Wamble (Bothell, WA USA)
19 out of 20 found this review helpful
I should have paid more mind to the folks who had trouble running it. In spite of the seller's claim, this game will not run reliably on XP. This was a waste of our time and money.
 Fun for everyone involved April 11, 2006
M. Hudgens (Washington, D.C.)
16 out of 17 found this review helpful
I was very happy with this game- it took the bets parts of the previous Oregon Trail incarnations and wove them together for a good overall product. I can appreciate a company which recognizes both the weaknesses and the strengths of their products and uses this information to get better. In this Oregon Trail you can once again chose how many you will travel with and name them (for some crazy reason this feature was eliminated in the 4th Oregon Trail edition), but you can also CHOOSE the times you stop to collect wild fruit or fish, instead of these circumstances just happening randomly (which does not make as much sense). To me, these were the biggest changes to previous games, but they were improvements.
Aside from the above changes, the basics of the game remain the same, and it will look familiar to those who have played other editions. A few things have been updated, particularly some aspects concerning Native Americans and some geography, but the good times still keep rolling.
Totally different than the original... May 11, 2005
Susan T P
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
I'm just putting in my 2 cents to contradict the previous reviewer...this version is totally different than the earliest version he is remembering. Quite sophisticated, teaches history and some natural science in an engaging video format.
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