The Amazon Trail

The Amazon Trail is the second game from the cultural and educational series of "tropes" from the MECC company from the US state of Minnesota, released after the next variation of "The Oregon Trail" in 1993 for DOS and Macintosh, and a year later - for Windows 3.1, at the same time in diskette and CD versions. It is the last edition in the repeated replication that followed in the second half of the 1990s, in which Windows 95 was added to the two platforms mentioned, remains today the most famous incarnation of The Amazon Trail. However, the original of this story is quite worthy of attention.

We immediately note the main differences from the Windows version mentioned and posted on our website for a long time: in the first edition of 1993, we are waiting for mainly graphics with a resolution of 320x200, and only the photo album and the Guide are presented in a gigantic size of 640x480. Nevertheless, text messages look just as good here, if not even slightly better, since they are served in simple and large white rectangle lines without the rounded “bubble” styling inherent in later versions. Voice acting, of course, is practically absent - with the exception of the headings of articles in the guide dictionary, which, if desired, can always be listened to by the announcer by clicking on a special icon below - however, taking into account the fact that the roles of the characters inhabiting the Amazonian shores were by no means performed professional actors, and MECC employees, the silence of the actors in the DOS incarnation can not be considered a special drawback.

But the landscapes (based on real life photographs taken in 1992) look expectedly less detailed, which is most felt when capturing rare plants and animals in dense rainforests. However, already on the river itself, the control of our boat in its original form, albeit a little, is somehow slightly more responsive, and various obstacles look much more realistic: mostly pitfalls and whirlpools instead of suspiciously numerous oncoming ships in the Windows version.