When I was in middle school, I loved going to the library. I’d volunteer there, and they had computers. Lots of them.
They were mostly Apple IIs, but there was one Apple IIGS, the “fancy” modern one. Looking back, it’s funny to think how high tech that seemed at the time.
The library had games, and the two I remember most were The Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (or one of the other Carmen Sandiego versions). I can’t remember exactly which ran on which machine, probably both on the Apple II at some point, but I do remember how much fun they were.
The graphics were awful by today’s standards, but that didn’t matter. The gameplay and the stories were great. Oregon Trail had those wonderfully stick figure graphics, and Carmen Sandiego was all text and deduction, but both were surprisingly immersive. They pulled you in.
Fast forward to now: there’s an Oregon Trail game on the Apple TV. My kids have played it. It’s wild to see something that defined a tiny part of my childhood sitting there as an app on the TV. And it’s actually hard, way harder than I remember. Maybe 11 year old me was terrible at it, or maybe I’ve just gotten soft.
The kids haven’t played Carmen Sandiego, but they’ve watched the Netflix animated version. So somehow it all comes full circle, a game I played in a school library on a beige plastic Apple II in Queens has become a glossy cartoon they stream in 4K.
It’s funny how that works. I can still picture that room at IS 227, the horse shoe setup of old Apple IIs humming away, green screens flickering, and me trying to ford a river without losing half my wagon party.
Some memories just stick.