Recommended version: Oregon Trail for DOS, released in 1992.

Original version: Oregon Trail for the HP 2100 microcomputer, released 1971/12/03

Welcome to Games Appreciation! All are welcome here, especially those of you who don’t play video games or are unfamiliar with them. Before I start talking about Oregon Trail two paragraphs down, I’d like to explain exactly why I’m running this feature. Well, obviously, I love video games. Let’s get that one out of the way. But secondly, I want to share this medium with other people. When someone says “I don’t play video games,” or “I only play flash games online,” my heart sinks a little. There are so many wonderful moments in games that touched me over the years, from the aria in Final Fantasy VI, to the childhood scene in To the Moon. There were many things that haunted me, such as Doug Rattman’s horrible life in Portal, moments that made me cry (the ending of The Walking Dead), moments that made me question why I was doing what I was doing (the entirety of Shadow of the Colossus) and more.

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