Before they became video game developers, the main characters in Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow were kids growing up in the 1980s, and like countless other Generation X kids, one of the first video games they fell in love with was The Oregon Trail. Many people of this age group probably remember hunting for deer and buffalo, trading for supplies, and possibly dying of dysentery on a westward journey to the Oregon Territory — all from the comfort of the Apple II computers in their school computer labs.

The Oregon Trail is actually older than most people might know. The idea for the game was initially conceived in 1971 by a group of recent college graduates, one of whom, Don Rawitsch, later got a job at the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC), a pioneer (pardon the pun) in developing educational software for Minnesota schools. MECC soon expanded its distribution nationwide, and The Oregon Trail quickly became its most popular game once it ...