By Andrew Liszewski
For a lot of kids their first dose of the harsh realities of life came from a game I use to play on the Apple IIe called The Oregon Trail. For those not familiar with it the goal was to basically get your family of settlers across the harsh American wilderness towards a new life.
You always started out full of hope as you chose your skilled trade and assembled your wagon but unfortunately along the way your clan would get hit with almost every hardship one could imagine from broken axles to dead horses to a plethora of diseases including dysentery which is now immortalized on this sweatshirt or t-shirt. And to be honest the game never really had what I would call a great bedside manner either. A lot of it was text based so getting a message like ‘You have died of dysentery’ was delivered with as much compassion as ‘River crossing ahead.’ Not to mention the fact that once you had succumbed to dysentery there was no ‘continue from last checkpoint’ option. Like in life, dying from dysentery in the game was final.
However this sweatshirt or t-shirt lets you hold your head high if your family never made it to the new frontier, and will help you meet up with others who suffered a similar fate. They’re available from The Wireless Catalog for $27.95 or $17.95. (Add $2 for XXL sizes.)
