The Oregon Trail handheld game now available

Oregon Trail is seeing not only a resurgence in popularity, but also translation to a variety of media, from card game to stage play to Minecraft skin. Just now hitting the streets is yet another adaptation: the Oregon Trail electronic handheld game.

https://twitter.com/Foone/status/968687056003059713

This game is the product of Basic Fun, a company that has released dedicated handhelds based on arcade classics such as Frogger, Q*Bert and Pac-Man. Oregon Trail seems to be the first time they’ve adapted a computer game, especially one that requires alphanumeric input. As such, this is not a straight port, having been adapted to use the handheld’s directional keys.

https://twitter.com/Foone/status/968695464039129088

This is not the first Oregon Trail game to be available exclusively from Target, with the 2016 card game and its follow-up being the first. But unlike those previous releases, Basic Fun’s game isn’t yet listed on the store’s website, and it can’t even be found on store shelves — at least not when I tried. After confirming Target had the game in stock, I asked a store clerk about the game and provided them with DPCI (similar to a SKU) 087-10-2886. They looked it up in their inventory and found that all 12 of the store’s units were still sitting in a box in the back room, yet to have been put on display. Knowing how hard it’d be to find these games once they were released, I asked if there was a limit to how many I could buy. Indeed there was: I was limited to the 12 they had in stock.