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Oregon Tail Tuesday, May 13, 2003 • read strip Viewing 75 comments:

Oh Hiram, you randy blacksmith you.

Hiram is the master of post syphillis apology letters.

hee hee . . . ray has a homo-erotic digital fantasy

Hey, if anyone calls him gay, he'll just sit there not being gay, and they'll be wrong.

That line only works so many times. I'm getting skeptical. I'm not sayin' he doesn't dig on chicks, just that he may not be too particular one way or the other when the mood is right. Obviously, Hiram's smithy shop just had a certain ambiance.

plus SO much coconut rum.

Dad, this is Randy.

i wonder how well that goes with sheet cake.

The hammerblows (no pun inteneded...yet) ringing out like bells, Hiram all sweaty in the soft glow of the forges...

Oregon Trail, you were the merciless pioneer life that killed all my childhood friends.
Now you are the emulation that kills all my adult friends.

Merciless? even though syphilis was entirely absent from the original? Plus stranded desperate cannibalism, a major oversight.
Still, beats being eaten by a grue.

Damn you dysentery! Damn your cold heart to heck! Ah well... I just wanted to shoot squirrels anyway.

The thing I hated about that game was that they made us play it even though we already lived in Oregon

dude that makes this game your heritage

Thinking back on the contents of said game, I'm not sure how I feel about that. *considers this new angle*

To be fair, I never could get all the way to Oregon.

Man, you missed out on the best part of the game!

all going down that river

all dodging rocks in the water

I got to it twice. When you did, you were the hero of the class. You had to hurry up and half ass your homework just so you had enough time to devote to that game. God I loved that game.

I know what you mean man!
In my class though, we only spent like a few days on the game.

Reminds me of the way my homeboys and I used to play PC games back in small times, in the olden days before multiplayer. One dude navigates, everyone else spectates.

division of labor: one kid with point click prowess and another diligently manning home row and down goes diablo

Earthsiege 2. Flying Herc. He shoots, I control the engines.

We weren't allowed to use mathematical equipment when we played Scorched Earth matches on the DOS, but that didn't stop my comrades using my Autistic powers of angle-deduction to guarantee the win.
... I wasn't allowed to play it myself though.

Yea but come on, you don't really need help for that. If you're talking about the first one, my Rogue's dexterity was so high at that point that Diablo just stood there recoiling as I pumped arrows into him. Pretty anti-climactic.

On Hardcore mode? I have got my doubts

BRILLIANT

Yeah. How come nobody plays games that way anymore? Is nobody interested in new games? Man, I could never get my friends to come over and play games and put up with that shit at all.

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I remember growing up in Oregon playing that on the school's one computer in 1996 and thinking "cool, we're in a video game"

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>:[

I really can't see how you'd call it "hellish". I mean... I have you been to Alaska?

i am in corvallis

Seriously, who the hell goes to Cornwallis?

I know!

seriously!

Hell: fire brimstone and death

fuckin... NM AZ NV anyone?

Sorry, I lamed you before I noticed that you live in Cowvallis.
Condolences, dude, but Portland is not that far of a drive.

There's no better word to describe the game Oregon Trail than "decent"

The look on Ray's face in the last three panels is a perfect bit of cartooning.

I remember back in small times I played Oregon Trail and named my party Mom, Dad, etc. Then when the game told me "Mom died of dysentery" I cried. This happened a couple of times.

I would name my characters after kids from class, and feed them jimsonweed if they'd pissed me off. "Your whole party has contracted dysentery..."

Phillipe, Phillipe, Phillipe.

game is mad decent.

Whatever you do, don't attempt to ford the fucking river, man. It always ends badly.


I played the game on the internet and literally everyone died when I attempted to float my wagon across the river. It was so sad when both "Asshole" and "Faggy" died.

I forded that bitch ALL the time.

When it's shallow enough to ford, it's actually less safe to caulk.

It's the "He wrote!" that does it for me.

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Sorry, that was dick.

did syphillis even come to america at that time???

If it did, it came through Hiram.

That is true. It was indeed because Hiram did come quite a lot.

Yes. Well before that time. Blame sailors and prostitutes!

Frenchified!

Many actually trace syphilis to the New World, one of comparably few diseases that made it from America to Europe instead of the other way around.

also, this comic is titled "oregon tail"


i just thought i'd point that out

Chubbied for making my brain stop filling in the "r" automatically. I would have had no idea.

I assumed it was a pun on the game's name... and, y'know... sex.

i didn't think about it as a pun on sex

but

okay

yeah

the alt text makes this a 6.

I believe the past tense of the verb "to shoe" is "shod".

Fun fact: There are actually four (five?) numbered versions of the Oregon Trail now, along with the many many many 'minor' upgrades.

Oregon Trail II is a serious player, in spite of the somewhat silly FMV stuff.

so juicy

I love this one because it's such a good stand-alone strip. Anyone could read this, regardless of story arc context, and it's just really concise and funny.

I just learned that they made a new 3d version of this. I must play it to see if it has smallpox-laden blankets and syphilis.

This would be the best remake ever.

how do you pronounce "oregon"? ORE-eh-gehn or organ?

like the keyed instrument.

accordian?

pft...'or-gone'..what in the dogg.