[Android Apps and Games] Fazulka:
Over the weekend I played a old version of Oregon Trail (1992) on my laptop. It is a fun game that is much shorter than I remembered.

I wanted to see if I could get it to work on my EVO, and thought I would post how I did is so other people could try if they wanted.

First, you will need to download the game. It is considered abandonware now and is avaliable on several sites. I downloaded it HERE. Note that this is not an APK, it is the MS-DOS version. Extract the files onto your SD into a folder called "oregon". Easy enough.

Next go HERE to download Android DosBox. I downloaded the WVGA version as it matched my screen resolution. The instructions at that site show to use ADB to push the APK and the config file to your phone. I just copied both to my SD card, then used a file manager to open the APK and install it. Either way will work. The dosbox.conf file must be on the root of the SD card.

Now you may have noticed that it says on the Android DosBox website that there is no virtual keyboard support. This presented a challenge, but if you have a phone with no keyboard look in the market for WiFi Keyboard. Once you set it as your keyboard it will give you a site that you can go to on your computer that will allow you to type. You can also access the page from another phone and use that to type.

No we are ready. On your phone open aDosBox. The config file you put on the SD already is already programed to mount the SD card as the "S" drive and put you into that folder. So to run the program you need to type 2 commands. First type in "cd\oregon" and hit enter. Do not type the quotes. This will move you to the oregon trail folder you made, and the screen should now say "S:\Oregon\>". Now type "oregon" and the game will load.

Notice the screen while playing will not act like a normal touch screen. You have to pretend it is a touchpad like on a laptop. Slice your finger to move the mouse cursor over buttons you want to press, then tap to click. You can do the sliding and tapping on any part of the screen.

There were then a couple things I wanted to change. I wanted aDosBox to automatically open the game when I ran it, I didn't want to have to type any commands. To do this mount the SD card and use notebook to edit the dosbox.conf file that you put on the root of your SD card. It will be one long line. The last bit of this file after the [autoexec] tag is just like a .BAT file, it allows you to execute commands automatically. Right now it should say:

mount s /sdcard
s:

The mount command creates a virtual drive that DOS can see. The “s” is the letter that will represent the drive, and /sdcard means that the files on your sd card can be accessed there. The s: is a command that makes that drive the one you are using. We want it to open run the commands I told you above automatically, so press enter after the s: and type this:

Cd\oregon\
Oregon

While you have this file open you may want to change how fast the game runs. This is a trade off. If you make it run faster animations will skip more, but new screens will load MUCH faster. Look in the code for the “cycles=2100”. This is the number you want to change. I recommend 5000 for fast loading, and OK animations.

Save this file, and unmount the SD card. Now when you open the aDosBox app it will load right into Oregon Trail.

Lastly, The Wifi Keyboard is a bit wonky in the game. If numbers are not working or it will only type CAPS then hold shift while you type the next letter. Then delete that letter and re type. I found that worked.

I thought that I would share this so other people could try it. I think it would be better with more mouse orientated games like “Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiago.” I hope at least someone likes this.

Also, try and beat 9328 as a high score!