Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy–Photo by Johnston/Getty Images and Rolling Stone
For those of you who may remember the old-school, multi-floppy-disc, kitschy game Oregon Trail, you’ll be excited to know that Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy was also a major fan back in the day, and spent a “retarded” amount of time, he says, dedicated to crossing the trail. So it makes sense that he would create his own Oregon Trail version called “Fall Out Boy Trail” which since its launch on March 3, has already had more than 250,000 plays.
According to Rolling Stone, where Wentz announced his latest creation, the game includes many of the original survival exercises. In Oregon Trail, you basically had to make your way across the United States in a covered wagon like early pioneers, and make sure you had provisions for the trail. In Fall Out Boy Trail, you help the band survive a cross-country tour, and you stock up on provisions including things like chicken McNuggets and Vitamin Water. Instead of dealing with wagon break-downs, you have to deal with various tour breakdowns, including emo issues like someone starting a nasty rumor on Absolute Punk! or band members getting dysentery. You can even let Pete Wentz “die of sadness.”
According to Wentz, “Video games look so real now, but that was the escape of them, how bad they looked. And the music was bad, so we were like, we have to find MIDI-style versions of all our songs. We couldn’t find them, so we just made them.”
What’s also cool about this game is its interactive component with the real Fall Out Boy tour. Those who complete the trail get tickets and other prizes. But in case you think Fall Out Boy is doing this for money, they’re not.
Wentz told Rolling Stone, “The best thing about it is there’s no real reason for it.” Instead, it was a way for the band to find “ways for people to engage” beyond their albums. “We don’t make any money from it. We have Vitamin Water in it but we don’t even have a Vitamin Water sponsorship.” For Wentz, the real retaliation is the McNuggets. “I’ve spent my entire life where people are like, you shouldn’t eat chicken McNuggets, that kind of food will kill you. Here’s my chance for chicken McNuggets to not kill me -they’ll keep me alive.”