Or-y-gun

The other night, don’t ask me what possessed him, but the boy decided to find this. And we proceeded to stay up way, way, way too late playing it. And for some unknown and unforeseeable reason, it was some of the most hilarious fun I’ve had in quite some time. I mean, the little program even has that part when you have to “flip the disk”. Remember those disks? The large, black floppies that seem to be just the perfect size and hardiness to be a high school punk band’s CD sleeve for their self-released, self-titled first album? Of course, you don’t actually get to flip a real disk, but still…

And the whole thing is just so utterly and pathetically entertaining. What with the shrill, piercing music, and the “would you like to look around” which, if you answer Y allows you the joys of surveying a stream and grassy hillside displayed with, in total, about six pixels.

Such beauty.

We went as carpenters at first, which is the equivalent of level medium. And do you remember how HARD the damn game is? We thought we had plenty of everything, but we kept getting lost, bandits stole all of our clothes (literally ALL – we assume we were naked), and the kids kept breaking their legs or getting the measles. And THEN we ran out of food and, literally every day, had to try trading for food (mostly useless) or hunting. We took turns with the hunting. No sexism in this frontier family.

And we both sucked. Royally. We attempted to shoot through rocks, turned our generic avatar left to shoot a buffalo licking our right elbow, succeeded in bringing home a squirrel (“You have brought home one pound of meat!”) and other such hunting atrocities. We’d never survive back in the day.

And then on the few occasions when we were actually successful in killing something, it would be over one hundred pounds and the narration would inform us that we could only carry the first hundred pounds back to the wagon. So there we are cussing out the kids for not helping and wondering why on earth it never occurs to us to come back for the second batch of meat when we know we’re just going to starve again in 20 days (if we’re eating on the bare-bones plan). And with the amount of trail losing going on, 20 days was, like, every five seconds.

Ridiculous.

So about this time I realize I haven’t eaten any dinner in real life and go to make myself a bagel. I’m not gone five minutes and I hear from the bedroom in a matter-of-fact voice:

Moe has the measles.

Moe is dead.

…

Louinda has a broken leg.

Louinda is dead.

…

Jebediah has cholera.

Jebediah is dead.

…
…
…

Everyone is dead.

I am livid. This is a CHILD’s game. Come on people. We can do this. I rearrange the large fleece mumu I wear for pjs when it’s cold in the house and settle in.

It’s time to get down to business.

This time, we’re going as bankers. This time, we’re buying HELLSA food. Like, maxing out the food option. We bought HELLSA sets of clothes. Lots of parts to trade later if we need them.

Start out on meager meals. Start on strenuous pace. None of this meandering shmeandering.

And folks…we just FLEW. It must have taken us an hour the first time to go two thirds of the way and then die. The second time, we got to Oregon in probably 20 minutes. No fooling around. We didn’t hunt once.

Lesson learned? Be rich. Life is much, much easier when you’re rich.