1995 · spinoff · MECC
The Africa Trail
Cycle a north-to-south transect of Africa with a small expedition team, balancing hydration, currency exchange, language phrasebooks, and political borders.
About the game
Africa Trail dropped the wagon for a bicycle. You lead a small international team south from Tunis to Cape Town across 12,000 miles of contemporary (mid-90s) African terrain: desert, equatorial jungle, savannah, mountain. The mechanics lean on hydration, currency exchange across many borders, and language phrasebook lookups.
It had the largest geographic scope of any MECC Trail title, and it leaned hardest into multicultural learning.
History
Released 1995 alongside Oregon Trail II. The Africa Trail was MECC's last major Trail-family title before the SoftKey acquisition.
Notable systems
- Real-world 12,000-mile route across 14 countries
- Currency, language, and border-crossing systems
- Hydration + nutrition modelled per leg
- Multilingual phrasebook minigame