How The Oregon Trail became a generational icon

On Version History: The game’s designer tells us how the brutal edutainment adventure came together.

Whether you played it in the back of your classroom or on your computer at home, if you were a kid in the last 30 years you almost certainly grew up playing The Oregon Trail .

On the season 5 premiere of Version History, our fearless wagon leader David Pierce is joined by gaming journalist Chris Grant and Philip Bouchard, the designer and team leader of the game’s most iconic version. They talk about the academic origins of The Oregon Trail, the game’s complicated legacy, and whether anyone ever really died of dysentery.

This is the first episode of the fifth season of Version History , and this time we’re going back to school. In the weeks to come, we’re taking on the iconic TI-84 graphing calculator, One Laptop Per Child, Chromebook, LeapPad, and the overhead projector.

Plus, this Friday, we’ll livestream a playthrough of The Oregon Trail from The Verge’s YouTube channel . Find out which Verge staffers make it to the end, and which ones fall along the way.

Here’s how to get every episode as soon as it drops:

If you want to know more about The Oregon Trail , here are some links to get you started: