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Oregon Trail: Tabletop Adventures!

Perhaps the most popular of all Edutainment (that's Education and Entertainment for those of you keeping score at home) games released on a personal computer, Oregon Trail has a special place in the hearts of former Computer Arts students all across America. This was no mere text adventure - with the addition of the now ubiquitous peripheral known as the mouse, Oregon Trail became the eye-hand coordination training tool of a whole generation, my generation.

nostalgia -noun

a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends

The Uncanny Valley seems to express itself most often for me in the form of nostalgia, some instances being so vivid and profound they induce a confusing state of deja vu. Fond childhood memories such as the hours spent in the school library pounding away at low-rez videogames like Oregon Trail under the watchful eye of the Librarian - heir apparent to the throne of all things technical in the Dark Days - can spark powerful recollections, smells, sounds, startingly strong emotions. With this in mind I sought to bring this memory into a more corporeal form, crafting a real-world tabletop version of Oregon Trail, replete with a hunting gallery, myriad game animas for the hunting, and a brightly colored shotgun for the hunt.