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Excerpt because it's be a pain in the ass to reformat the whole article for forums.

4. Matt's character has a pipe. If this game were designed today do you believe you would be required to remove the pipe from Matt's mouth? Did you feel any responsibility about the high rate of tobacco use among children of the 1980's?

If all those kids had taken up pipe smoking, then I would definitely feel guilty – but I think I’m in the clear! Honestly, if I were to design another Oregon Trail, I don’t think we would see Matt using any form of tobacco.

Even back then, any references to tobacco could be controversial. We got away with the pipe for Matt (which was the visual designer’s idea – not mine), but in Lewis & Clark I ran into a bigger controversy. The real Lewis & Clark took along tobacco as one of the items to trade with Native Americans. But I was told by the publisher to remove this trade item from the product.

Oregon Trail brings back memories of the times in our computer class, all we would do is play Oregon Trail. Sometimes it was extremely fun too as there were times when it was a race to the bell.

Ah, good times. I played many different versions of it, most at school. Loved that game.

I remember playing this on both Macintosh Classics and Apple IIs in grade school. We would have casual contests, and travel as light as possible with the maximum number of oxen to see how blindingly fast of a b-line we could make to the West Coast, or see just how much we could shoot on hunting trips, with particular effort on how many buffalo we could kill.

We also had the game at home after we upgraded from our old IBM PC in the early 90s, and I recall Uts and I spending time coming up with some incredibly amusing journals.

Good memories...

EDIT: Pretty neat interview, too.

EDIT2: Holy crap, I remember the 800 pound/Indian rumor!!

For us it was Amazon Trail... a FUCKER to beat, but fun

Uraniun235 wrote:

Even back then, any references to tobacco could be controversial. We got away with the pipe for Matt (which was the visual designer’s idea – not mine), but in Lewis & Clark I ran into a bigger controversy. The real Lewis & Clark took along tobacco as one of the items to trade with Native Americans. But I was told by the publisher to remove this trade item from the product.

............... Ok, so screw with that part of history, just because we're too PC for tobacco use.

Sometimes, I think we go too far protecting children.

LadyTevar wrote:

Uraniun235 wrote:

Even back then, any references to tobacco could be controversial. We got away with the pipe for Matt (which was the visual designer’s idea – not mine), but in Lewis & Clark I ran into a bigger controversy. The real Lewis & Clark took along tobacco as one of the items to trade with Native Americans. But I was told by the publisher to remove this trade item from the product.

............... Ok, so screw with that part of history, just because we're too PC for tobacco use.

Sometimes, I think we go too far protecting children.

Quite. Just toss in some bit about how it was a widely accepted habit back in the day when they were unaware of the health risks that we know about now... seriously, that's just a wee bit retarded, though in retrospect I suppose I couldnt' really blame them for that line of thinking.

I can't agree, Tev....but only because you used the word 'sometimes.'

Every last character in Oregon Trail is also horribly killed in some way or another dozens of times over by elementary-school players. Should we nerf that because it makes death look cool?

Ahhh oregen trail. I killed my way across the plains many a time. Seven hundred pounds of meat I can't use? Ooooh welll.

Funny he should mention the tombstones in that interview. Whenever someone brings up Oregon Trail, I always think about this one guy who named all his people after charaters in Loony Toons. When his last character died, upon my suggestion, he put "that's all folks" on the tombstone.