Before Purple Rain, There Was the Prairie: Prince's Unlikely Role in The Oregon Trail's First Journey

Before he was a music legend, Prince Rogers Nelson was an 8th grader in Minneapolis. In 1971, his history class became the first-ever playtesters for a new teletype computer game designed by his teacher to teach about pioneer life. That game was The Oregon Trail.

For millions of people, the phrase 'The Oregon Trail' conjures a specific set of memories: a covered wagon trundling across a pixelated screen, fraught decisions about fording rivers, and the grim, all-caps declaration, 'YOU HAVE DIED OF DYSENTERY.' It was a foundational piece of educational software, a staple of school computer labs in the 1980s and 90s. But the game's origins stretch back further, to a single teletype terminal in a Minneapolis classroom in 1971, where its very first testers included a quiet student who would one day become a global music icon: Prince.

A Classroom Project in 1971

The story begins not in Silicon Valley, but at Carleton College in Minnesota. Don Rawitsch, a history major and student teacher, wanted a more engaging way to teach his 8th-grade U.S. history class about the 19th-century westward expansion. He envisioned an interactive game where students would face the same harsh choices pioneers did. Rawitsch, along with two friends and fellow student teachers, Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger, who were adept at programming, brought the idea to life. In just two weeks, they coded the first version of 'The Oregon Trail' in BASIC programming language, designed to run on a school district mainframe computer accessed through a single, clunky teletype terminal.

The First Wagon Train of Testers

When Rawitsch brought the game to his 8th-grade history classes at Bryant Junior High in Minneapolis, it was an immediate hit. Students lined up for their turn to type commands like 'BANG' to hunt for food and make decisions that would determine their fate on the digital trail. The game was a novelty, a powerful new way to experience history. What no one knew at the time was that a future legend was sitting among those students. A young Prince Rogers Nelson was enrolled at Bryant Junior High and was a student in the very classes that served as the game's first focus group.

A Royal Playtester

The connection is not just fan speculation; it comes from the game's creator himself. Don Rawitsch has confirmed that Prince was a student in his class during the fall of 1971 when the game was introduced. While he can't recall a specific moment of seeing the future star hunched over the terminal, the context is undeniable. In a 2011 interview with Minneapolis's City Pages, Rawitsch reflected on the quiet student:

I know he was in my class, and I know that my 8th-grade history class was the first to use Oregon Trail... But he was very quiet, and I don't remember him asking for help or saying anything about the game. In a class of 35 or 40 kids, you just don't remember them all.

This small, almost-missed intersection of history is fascinating. It places one of the 20th century's most innovative musical artists at the genesis of one of its most iconic educational video games. Long before he was revolutionizing music, Prince was part of a classroom that helped launch a digital revolution in education.

From Teletype to Global Phenomenon

After that first semester, the paper printouts of the game's code were nearly lost. Rawitsch, however, later took a job at a new state-funded organization, the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC). He brought The Oregon Trail with him, uploading it to the organization's network in 1974. From there, it was refined, and in 1985, the classic graphical version for the Apple II was released, cementing its place in the memory of a generation. It's a strange and wonderful piece of trivia that a Minneapolis kid who would later define the 'Minneapolis Sound' was present for the first, humble steps of a game that would eventually reach classrooms across the world.

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