Hitch up the SUVs! It’s the Thule Trail.

As reported earlier this month over at Wired’s Game|Life blog (yet somehow glossed over by other blogs!), Swedish car rack maker Thule has released an online flash game called The Thule Trail. The game is a genuinely hilarious re-take on the Apple/DOS classic The Oregon Trail. The developers over at Periscopic obviously dedicated themselves to creating an authentic Oregon Trail experience – this time with a car or SUV instead of wagons, and road junk food instead of buffalo meat. And not a single blatant advertisement throughout the game that I could see, other than the car rack on top of your SUV.

Most people who grew up playing The Oregon Trail played it because their teacher had an Apple //e hidden in the corner of their grade 4 classroom along with a host of other MECC games such as Odell Lake and Number Munchers. But the real draw was always the Oregon Trail: five kids would pile around the green-on-black Apple monitor and yell commands to the wagon driver, then anticipate who would die of cholera or dysentery first (and subsequently fight over what would appear on the tombstone). I remember someone saying that if you purchased only spare wagon wheels and no food (or bullets), you could kill your whole wagon train within a few days on the trail.

In The Thule Trail, the developers got everything right – from the dithered color graphics, to the 1-bit mono sound, simple yet clever game mechanics, and a sense of humor that does justice to road trips. The only thing I really miss is watching andy die of dysentery (peperony and chease!)

I sent an e-mail over to the folks at Periscopic asking if any of their team would have time for a quick interview – hopefully we’ll hear something back! In the mean time, I’m going to continue writing a short article on The Oregon Trail as both a great game and an educational tool.