You control the line in the water, pressing the OK key to pull in your haul. (This minigame is also repurposed when you need to fought off bandits.) The fishing game places you on a river bank. You stand near the center of the woods and blast critters like rabbits and deer. Food is key to surviving, so there are fishing and hunting minigames. When your wagon breaks, there is a timing minigame involving a hammer and nails. Gameloft's minigames are a nice addition. You may even injure a party member and then you have to sacrifice an entire day or travel just to rest. You choose the pace of the wagon train, from a jaunt to a run, but like everything else, this comes with risks. Marcus Whitman challenges you to beat him to Oregon, but there are kids at the various towns and forts that also offer to race you to the next outpost. There is also a racing element to the game. Occasioanlly you will discover shortcuts that offer benefits and hazards, such a floating your wagon down a (coin-filled) stream during a minigame. But sometimes good things happen, such as picking up a hitchhiker that offers monetary assistance. The aforementioned bear attacks can lead to great injury, for example. There are hazards along the way, spotted somewhat in advance on the minimap that stretches across the bottom of the screen. Reaching your destination is fraught with peril. (Perhaps a DS, XBLA, or Wii edition can add some of that management back in?)

You must worry about food stocks and repairs while traveling, but Gameloft strips out the minutia of resource management to keep the pacing tight for a mobile audience. The carpenter's wagon maintenance will help stave off potential disaster.

You must choose your wagon leader's profession, which has an overarching effect on the trip. You start your wagon journey in Missouri. There is always something happening in The Oregon Trail, and it keeps you glued to the screen. The event animations, like a bear attack or an ambush, pop up with enthusiasm. The wagon team is cute and animated, as they make a literal dash through basins and prairies. Contrasting it with the Apple IIe original is like the switch between black-and-white and color television. The Oregon Trail is an exceedingly colorful game that just pops off the screen. The mobile maker has retained the spirit of the game, but infused it with some necessary streamlining and a number of colorful minigame events. And now Gameloft has resurrected this classic for mobile. Many a sixth-grader died of cholera in 1985.

The game snuck that educational stuff between doses of fun resource management and some rather narrowing encounters with disease and disaster. If you went to middle school in the eighties, when schools had computer labs full of Apple IIe machines, then surely you remember The Oregon Trail, an educational game that chronicled a wagon trail journey to the fertile Willamette Valley.

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