‘The Oregon Trail’ is being developed into a movie

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – One of the most successful computer games may soon make its way to the big screen.

Bill Heinemann, the creator of “The Oregon Trail,” said it is hard to find someone these days who has not heard of the game.

He co-created the game in 1971 at Carleton College in Northfield. It would go on to sell tens of millions of copies and make its way into the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

“Humbling, in a way, that a little thing I spent two weeks on has become a worldwide phenomenon,” he said.

The idea sprouted when Heinemann’s friend Don came up with a board game for students he was teaching that simulated 1800s settlers going west on the Oregon Trail.

Computers were in their very early days, but Heinemann sensed an opportunity.

“I’d seen Pac-Man, and that was about it,” he said. “More people know about it than don’t know about it.”

The game has become known for the many different ways players can die, with death by dysentery always being a crowd pleaser.

Heinemann said his favorite way to go in the game was by snakebite.

“It only happened once every several hundred times, and so people could’ve played it for months and all of a sudden, ‘What? I got bit by a snake and died?’” he said.

Now, more than 50 years after the first Oregon Trail program, Apple is reportedly developing the game into an action-comedy film.

“Surprising to me how popular it’s become and how long the interest in it has been around, and this is just the next step, I guess,” he said.

Heinemann said he won’t be making any money off the movie.

In fact, he said he’s never seen a dime from the iconic game.

He and his two co-creators turned it over to the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium shortly after they invented it.

“I didn’t do it for money,” he said. “I did it for just the love of the game and the love of teaching.”