Let's Play Amazon Trail: A Whole New Assortment of Diseases
13Almost a month ago, we packed up our wagon and traveled the Oregon Trail! It was fun I guess, I think some people enjoyed it. @Dashcloud answered the call for suggestions for other games with a link to Amazon Trail.
Created by MECC in 1993, Amazon Trail is about making a delivery and not being destroyed by the Amazon. Seems appropriate.
I played a demo of this game when I was like 7 years old, and I remember being frustrated with the controls, directions, ambiguity of what to do, and generally everything about it. I haven’t played it since and have no idea if it will even work in this format, but nevermind that: let's play it together!
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The introduction is absurdly long and boring. Here it is in video form because now I can record my screen and audio output 😎 but I recap it all below so don't bother.
Here we are, lying asleep in bed in good old Peru, Indiana, the city where Grigori Rasputin's daughter was mauled by a circus bear. Having her father's blood (in a vial around her neck), she of course survived.
Suddenly...
Plants appear everywhere, filling our room!
Then our cat that was lying at our feet turns into a jaguar. Not just any jaguar though... it turns into the jaguar of the Inca King.
He rambles on for a long time.
At this point I really don't know if we're bringing drugs to people or cats or if we already took the drugs or if the conquistadors are trying to take the drugs first or what.
Anyway let's do this shit.
Right out of the gate, we get accosted by a guard who's skull is not skull-shaped.
Now we need a name! Rather than come up with all the names and stuff myself like last time, I'm going to throw it to y'all. Come up with something clever and not lame, post with the most stars wins (unless I say otherwise).
Also, I peeked ahead and our next decision will be which buddy we go with, Antonio or Isabel. Pick one! I don't know if there is a difference or not.
Reply to this comment with your suggestion, not to the thread. Let's keep this organized or so help me...
@Moose I believe watching Vladimir Putin on his quest with Isabel would be quite entertaining.
@Moose Diego (Dora's jaguar owning cousin)
@Moose Waldo, so that no one can find us.
@Moose Amanda
@Moose hem
@Moose goodness gracious this one is way less forgiving WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE (س ಥ⌂ಥ)س
@Moose Keyser Söze, so he can bring back some other "medicine".
@Moose PS our name should be SHITBAGS MCGEE
@Moose Irk. Since we got his breakfast quest all settled.
@Moose Name: Yermawm Sahot
@Moose Indiana Jones of course. His sidekick should be Diego. Isabel would only be a short fling and not as funny.
@Moose No its becky
@Thumperchick how about we combine ideas : Indiana Irk
@Moose Makollig Jezvahted
These are all terrible and you should be ashamed
@Moose What about Moose ? But I still like Indiana Irk better. um... Texas Moose ? I tried. I give up
@Moose Shame should be the name then.
@Moose McLovin?
@Moose Or what about Doogie Howser, since we are bringing medicine?
@Moose Agnodike (First female doctor and I've always thought the name sounded partly funny and partly like an action hero)
@Moose Butts
@Moose Xena
@Moose JonT, though if we go with this name we know we will never make it because JonT never delivers.
I kid, I kid! But seriously.
Thanks phone.
Anyway the name has been chosen! I will update in a couple hours probably and let everyone know who we are.If you have a clever name, go ahead and post it. I am choosing the name with a random picker, and each star gets the name an additional entry, so anything could win.
Also, only two people suggested which companion we should have. One said Isabel and the said "not Isabel" but offered a name that was never an option. So, uh, anyone else care? Otherwise I guess we'll go with Isabel.
@Moose companion: lebasi
@Moose I Google Battle'd Isabel and Antonio. Antonio won so I'm going with Isabel since she's the underdog
@Moose
@Moose Can his name be Jeff/Jeff Bezos?
Boy, I'm not on the ball tonight. Took me a while before I realized that it's referring to the South American Amazon, not Amazon.com.
Can you make a delivery and not be destroyed by the Amazon.com? :)
@mortonfox I thought the same. My name suggestion is Bezos.
@mortonfox I totally thought the same thing too.
@mortonfox We've seen the game you described before..Woot! They made deliveries but were totally destroyed by the Amazon.com. Game Over.
@mortonfox So I got that it was about the Amazon but still somehow thought we were making an Amazon.com delivery in the Amazon.
@stardate820926 Amazonception!
Video here
Indiana Irk, including Isabel, it is! That was alliteration.
Here's our little reptilian companion. I think we picked well, she survives on flies and other bugs, so more food for us.
How we doin', Froggy?
Cool, cool.
These buttons are completely unintuitive, so I started clicking around. The one that looks like a rug...
Oh rad! We could make it to Oregon and back with all this! I wonder what that basket icon is...
He's not MY Inca King.
There's also this screen, which I assume is for taking pictures and edutaining ourself about Amazonian flora and possibly fauna. This screen is a different aspect ratio than everything else so don't expect to see it often because I have to manually crop it!
Here is our map. We are at the far-right yellow triangle
"Let's turn around"
I'd like to know more about this king. What sort of economy does he run? Is he benevolent or will this medicine be offered only to those who can offer a good-enough tribute?
We can also talk to people.
Hi José!
I must be bad at history because I could've sworn conquistadors and Incans were all pretty much gone by 1993.
We said "adiós" and got on the trail. The trail is actually a river, so this game might be named poorly.
Immediately our cat/jaguar reminded us what we were doing.
Some might even call this a King's Quest! Except those were fun.
This game differs from Oregon Trail in that you can actually steer your boat. Arguably more fun, though it means that blame for wrecks and misfortune rests more on the player.
Reminder: we have 400 pounds of food on this canoe
This blue mist showed up and made me nervous, but it was either a waterfall or a boss fight or a typhoon, so the best course was to head straight in.
Catguar informs us that we have been teleported and apparently this is a time travel game? Once we come out of the blue mist, we ask Isabel where we landed.
So, we didn't actually teleport...
With no apparent changes from the mist, we pressed on until Isabel stopped us.
Figured it'd be good to check with the locals. We began to step towards the only sign of civilization, a shack just a few yards away, when suddenly we hear steps from behind us.
"Who are you?"
"When are you?"
We turned to Isabel, who was busy stalking a moth nearby.
Wonderful.
So we're at a crossroad, except the road is a river. We can continue down the main river to the next yellow triangle, or we can check out the other fork that leads to some unknown mystery hiding behind Isabel's stupid head. Where should we go? Also let me know if you want to increase/decrease pace, increase/decrease rations, hunt, fish, etc.
@Moose I say for now we head down to the next yellow triangle. See what those hold for us before deciding to head off on other explorations.
@Moose well I for one am surprised at how many people voted for Irk to go on a mission that almost assures his death
I mean uh... I have great faith in you! travel on past Isabel's stupid head!
@Moose I think the opposite of @Bingo It seems this is the very time to throw caution to the wind and go exploring while we are healthy and have lots of food! (besides if you fuck up you can easily start over and get back to this point)
@Moose Harpoon the moth.
@Moose I've always believed in the saying "When you come to a fork in the road, take it" So I think we should go exploring behind Isabel's head.
Also decrease rations. 350lbs of food seems like a lot now but we dont want to end up buying food from the locals & eating monkey brains or something
@chellemonkey Very practical- let's just die and start over. I like it.
@sammydog01 That's probably for the best; I think we did something wrong to get thrown back in time. The incan king needs his coca cola in 1993 - what is the point in giving it to him in 1946? Maybe the real quest is to impregnate the current incan queen, thus creating the future incan king? And does that have a minigame in this version? The coke will expire either way, though.
@Moose Is there a reason we need 10 machetes for 2 people? Are we throwing them like boomerangs and just not understanding why they don't return to us?
@Thumperchick They're for juggling.
@Thumperchick it's like when you run out of clean underwear but instead of doing the laundry you just buy more underwear
@Lotsofgoats I've actually done that with dishes . . . More than once.
@Moose Can we play Carmen Sandiego next? She's fucking hot.
@Thumperchick Machetes get dull when you are hacking through thick jungle brush.
@Moose
~We need to find "cinchona" or the mission is a bust. So let's look around and see if we can find some
~Claudio Villas Boas landing strip project sounds like it involves drug cartels. Let's avoid him. I don't think cinchona is the type of item they carry. Just sayin'
@Pavlov ....me too. (I assume you mean the buy more, not the throw like a boomerang or juggle)
@moose
What fate has befallen our travelers? Did they die exploring? Did they run off with some locals? Are they continuing on their dreary path?
@MrGlass I suck and forgot to update today. I'll try to tomorrow!
Sorry for the delay! People seemed to agree with @MrGlass's suggestion to lower rations and go exploring off the beaten path/river.
I just told you what I want you to do. Why are you being weird?
Yes, lets.
Instructions are totally clear but I figured veering left would do what we wanted to do.
Okay... where? Am I supposed to do something with this information?
Hey look, a boat in the distance! Maybe that's the tribe! We should pull up close and say hi.
"Hey where'd you learn to drive a boat? Idiot!" we shout, hastily paddling away from the scene.
Look! A thing to the left on the shore! Also look, a button on the left with a tree and a monkey on it! That must be how you land the boat to talk to tribes and stuff.
So, here's the Amazon rainforest or whatever. You can click on animals if you want.
Aeeeagh
I wasn't staring at its rump to notice if it was red or not, but it definitely had some bat-like features...
Yeah well what the hell do you know? Didn't realize I was sailing with the Amazon's expert forest nerd.
Hey Isabel, this is my new adventure pal; your attitude and weird head have been a burden on this important mission.
What the hell is a night monkey
Oh, I guess that was a night monkey. That's really really scary, I think.
Lick it
So anyway the forest is super boring and lame, so we got back in our boats.
Like five seconds later...
It teleported us all the way back to the fork in the river
It also knocked off a ton of health (the red bar at the top. might also be happiness. I really can't say for sure) AND got us sick.
You think? You think?!
More blue mist! Maybe it has healing properties that we didn't notice before.
Okay yeah whatever shut up cat
"We've come down with typhoid?" Since when did you get typhoid, Isabel?
Anyway then we met a dude
And found out we traveled through time again!
I asked if we could "borrow" his wheels for a while and maybe get this game done with lickity split
We can take his rubber balls if we want to, that's up to y'all though
uh oh this sounds like a history lesson
Nooo stop please
You don't understand, I don't care-
Shut uuuuuup
Okay so I forgot to screenshot the map but we're at the yellow triangle second from the right.
It looks like we can try to head southwest, northwest, or regular west. Also we can rest, change pace/rations, and try to get our hands on Mr. Ford's balls. You decide!
@Moose I vote Ford balls.
@Moose Head southwest and up the rations again.
@Moose north by northwest
@Moose We've been gone for 64 days and all we found was a stupid monkey? We had better find the main trail again.
@Moose Rubber balls now clearly indicates a rubber ball gun later, which you'll need for the night monkeys. Is there even hunting in this game?
Mini-update: I don't think there's any question that we want the Ford Balls™.
Amazon Trail does a couple things that are definitely better than Oregon Trail, and one thing is trading: you choose what you want to offer, instead of someone saying "I'll give you a wagon wheel for 300lbs of food. Oh you don't have that? Sorry too bad, also you just wasted a day like a chump."
Historically speaking, we haven't been big fans of clothes, so that seemed like a safe choice that wouldn't bring about any protests.
Henry Ford really was a brilliant business man; this guy knows a good deal when he sees it. One piece of garbage he picked off of a tree for a set of clothes that have been dropped in the river twice and worn by a Typhoid patient.
Let's take a look at our inventory and admire our new Ford Ball™
W-where is it?! Where is our ball? Wait a minute, that basket for Inca King gifts...
: [
We're already bringing the dude medicine but I guess he can have our Deluxe Ford Ball™ with Stick Technology.
Okay now we just need to know where to go next.
@Moose Let's hunt (or fish as you would do in this game).
@Moose This game hurts my head.
@Moose We have harpoons? Thar she blows, Cap'n Ahab! Let's kill something.
@sammydog01 Monkey stew on the menu ?
@Thumperchick I think it's trying too hard to be educational. Not enough action. I'd suggest making this into some sort of drinking game. You'd be doing shots of milk though. Not so fun. Well maybe if it was chocolate milk ? Or screw the milk and go for chocolate ?
@ceagee You could take my shots for me!
@Moose any chance the cure for typhoid is in one of those first aid kits?
@Thumperchick maybe the goat @christinewas would be better suited for that. I'm a light weight when it comes to shots.
@Moose By the way, copal oil is a ceremonial incense the Mayans used and also a kick-ass medicine. But I guess rubber balls are nice too?
@ceagee When I read this comment out of context, I thought needles were headed my way. I've been stabbed enough in the last year that I didn't mind as much as I probably should. But those other shots sound much better.
@sammydog01 Well if you are a dog they would be. Oh wait.......
@Moose What fate has befallen our travelers? Will Indiana Irk make it to the Inca king? Will Isabel die of dysentery?
@ceagee
@MrGlass And what about Naomi ?
@sammydog01
@Moose quit pretending to do real work and get back to our quest dammit!
@MrGlass @chellemonkey The dumb stupid thing won't load!
@Moose Another journey cut short by technical glitches? I feel like these are devolving into another Tron sequel.
You were 7 in 1993?