Can You Beat Oregon Trail by Waiting at a River for 14,272 Years? A Reverse Engineering Odyssey

2025-01-13
Can You Beat Oregon Trail by Waiting at a River for 14,272 Years? A Reverse Engineering Odyssey

A Twitch streamer attempted to beat the classic game Oregon Trail by exploiting a bug: waiting at a river for 14,272 years. This led to an epic reverse engineering challenge. Using MAME emulator and debugging tools, the author delved into the Apple II version's code, discovering the game crashed due to flawed year handling during save/load. While not achieving a complete victory, the author successfully modified the game's code, resolving the crash, and shared their reverse engineering approach, offering valuable insights for other developers.

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