The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
17 Feb 2025
Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet here: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/Pop quiz: What’s the longest-running video game in history? It’s not Pac-Man or Donkey Kong or even Pong… it’s The Oregon Trail. A true pioneer (and we don’t just mean the ones in the covered wagons), the Oregon Trail has sold more than 65 million copies (that’s more than the Beatles’ White Album) and it spawned an “edu-tainment” industry now worth over $6B. But this wholesome game was created by three Minnesota student teachers, without a single thought towards making money… which is exactly why Oregon Trail made so much of it. Find out why this iconic game is a textbook MVP (Minimum Viable Product)… how an acquisition by Shark Tank’s “Mr. Wonderful” almost led to a collab with Barbie… and why the Oregon Trail is the best idea yet.Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet for the untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with, and the bold risk takers who brought them to life. Episodes drop every Tuesday, subscribe here: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/—-----------------------------------------------------GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Full Episode
Yeti's Nick and Jack here from the studio. Since it's President's Day and markets are closed, we decided to serve up a sample of our weekly show, The Best Idea Yet. It's our second show, which just got nominated for an Ambie Award, by the way, for Best Business Podcast. Not too shabby. Not too shabby. And this episode, it's actually our most viral one yet.
It's about the Oregon Trail game, the first video game that you ever played. But Few know how the Oregon Trail actually began. Each week, we explore the most viral products of all time, and here is an entire episode for you to check out. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this sample of the best idea yet. It was my best birthday party, and I planned it myself.
This was a whole new concept, and the concept is called the reverse surprise party. So you invite all your friends to your party, but you don't tell them where it is. You don't tell them what it is. You just tell them to wear a tuxedo and look fantastic. So we showed up at the front of Nick's apartment, not knowing where we were going.
And we all piled into a limousine and Nick told the driver what the destination was. Jack, this was the first ever reverse surprise party. One of many more to come. It might've been the best birthday party ever. Yeah, it created this entire concept of the reverse surprise party purely out of the one goal of optimizing and maximizing enjoyment.
You won't hear it often on a business podcast, but sometimes the best motivation to create a product has nothing to do with making money at all. Sometimes, products start with that same goal, to optimize and maximize enjoyment. Exactly.
And if you want the perfect example of this, look no further than the subject of today's show, an iconic game created by three idealistic young teachers in the great state of Minnesota. This story features trappers and bankers, preachers and con artists, and oxen. Oh, the oxen. Also, Jack, many, many deaths from dysentery. That's right, Yetis. We're talking about the Oregon Trail.
Or as many of us end up calling it, Oregon Trail. Drop the the. It's cleaner. If you went to school in the 80s and 90s, you played this game on your classroom's beat-up Macintosh computer, alongside other classics like Carmen Sandiego and Mario Teaches Typing. Or you may have come across it later, playing a free version online or on your PS5, maybe even your Nintendo Switch.
But Yeti's Oregon Trail goes all the way back to the 1970s. In fact, it's the longest running video game in history, dating back to the PPCE. That's the pre-PC era of 1971. And we repeat, longest running video game in history. We're talking about four years before a guy named Bill Gates co-founds Microsoft. Jack, we're talking five years before another guy named Steve Jobs co-found Apple.
It is the pioneer of video games, literally. Speaking of Apple, Tim Cook should be leaving daily offerings at a trading post at Fort Laramie because the Oregon Trail had a huge role in making Apple what it is today. Generations of millennial kids might never have begged their parents for that first Macintosh if it weren't for this game.
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