The player can choose to be a banker from Boston, a carpenter from Ohio, or a farmer from Illinois. The game has been released in many editions by various developers and publishers who have acquired rights to it, as well as inspiring a number of spinoffs and parodies. The player assumes the role of a wagon leader guiding his or her party of settlers from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon's Willamette Valley on the Oregon Trail via a covered wagon in 1848. The original game was designed to teach school children about the realities of 19th century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail is a computer game originally developed by Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger in 1971 and produced by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) in 1974. Unfortunately, this game is currently available only in this version. If you prefer to use a java applet emulator, follow this link. This game is emulated by javascript emulator em-dosbox. For fullscreen press 'Right Alt' + 'Enter'. Game is controlled by the same keys that are used to playing under MS DOS.