You can now play Oregon Trail on Stata

[Richard Williams]

https://twitter.com/mcdroste/status/1321482111350677505

If Stata sales triple in the next few days, you will now know why.

In one of my classes I ask students what things they will remember decades from now. One of them said Oregon Trail, and the whole class immediately started talking about it. It is odd to see 20-year-olds reminiscing about their youth.

I had never heard of Oregon Trail before but it turns out it has been around since 1971. It may have taken 50 years, but I guess we can all rejoice that the game finally made it to Stata.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Trail_(series)

[Nick Cox]

I saw The Oregon Trail (1959) perhaps around 1961 in a cinema. All I can remember at this juncture is some unsuspecting guy suddenly being struck down by an arrow. Now some movie buff will tell me there is no such scene.

[Matthew J. Baker]

Nick Cox and Richard Williams - that game was an educational staple back in the day of the TRS-80 and Commodore 64. Maybe someone will set things up so we can play Zork in Stata (that would dent my already dwindling research productivity...). My kids got a kick out of this more recent parody.

[Mead Over]

My daughters, who now code in Stata as well as other languages, recall spending hours on the Windows graphics version of the Oregon Trail in the '90's. Bravo for Michael Droste who ported Oregon Trail from Python to Stata. As you can see from his site, Michael Droste has also made several other much more serious contributions to the Stata community.

You can install all 39K of the Oregon Trail -ado- file here:

view net describe oregontrail, from(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mdroste/stata-oregontrail/main/)

A port of Zork to Stata would indeed be amusing. Perhaps due to Covid, there seems to be a resurgence in interest in Dungeons and Dragons played on the web. With -zork.ado-, Stata would be relatable to a whole new audience.