Movie version of Minnesota-born video game ‘Oregon Trail’ in the works

NORTHFIELD, Minn. — One of the most successful computer games of all time deep roots in Minnesotaand now it’s being made into a movie.

Bill Heinemann says it’s hard to find anyone these days who hasn’t heard of “The Oregon Trail.”

The computer game he co-created in 1971 at Carleton College in Northfield has sold tens of millions of copies and is in the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

“It’s surprising, satisfying and humbling in a way that a little thing I spent two weeks on has become a global phenomenon,” Heinemann said.

The idea came about when Heinemann’s friend, Don Rawitsch, devised a board game for the students he taught that simulated 19th century settlers moving west on the Oregon Trail.

Computers were still in their infancy, and although Heinemann says he had only seen “Pac-Man,” he sensed an opportunity.

“I said, ‘That will be a great application for a computer,’ because you don’t have to shake the dice to see what happens,” Heinemann said. “What happens may be unexpected.”

The game has become famous for the many ways players can die, including from dysentery, but Heinemann’s favorite was death by snakebite.

“It only happened once in hundreds of times, and so people could have been playing it for months and suddenly, ‘What? I got bit by a snake and died? This has never happened to me before!'” he said. .

Now, more than 50 years after the first “Oregon Trail” program, Apple is reportedly developing the game into an action comedy.

“It’s surprising to me how popular it has become and how long the interest in it has lasted,” Heinemann said. “And this is just the next step, I think.”

He won’t make any money from the movie. Heinemann has never even seen a cent of the iconic game.

He and his two co-creators, Rawitsch and Paul Dillenberger, turned it over to the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium shortly after they invented it.

Heinemann says he doesn’t care.

“I didn’t do it for the money,” he said. “I did it purely for the love of the game and the love of teaching.”

Heinemann spent most of his career in software. He says he always enjoys it when people tell him how much they love the game.