Ah Mecc your biggest strength was in the trail games and this game gets no love at all.

Gameplay and Story: July 1897, the United States is in the throughs of a depression, times were tough and people were beginning to lose hope. Then from out of the North came astonishing news....GOLD! So yeah before you can even think about buying a ticket to Alaska (yeah I don't know why they don't just take you straight to the Yukon but then it wouldn't be a trail game) you have to pick a partner, in the ticket office you will meet up with A miner with experience, a trail guide, a carpenter, and a banker (useful if you need money) You can either go to Skagway or Dyea (pronounced Die-ee) along the way you may run into famous figures from history like Gangster Jefferson Randolph Smith (yeah he's kind of an obscure dude though) Mountie Sam Steele of the Northwest Mounted Police (as it was called at the time) even Jack London.

Graphics: This game is definitely alot different than most of the trail games or like a majority of Mecc's early games, here the characters are animated, and they actually found the technology to make them talk (there is a version of the game on Classic Reload where all we get are speech bubbles which is a shame but this was likely a DOS version...no I won't review the DOS games).

Sound: Talk about accurate to the time period, the background music uses an out of tune piano as if you were in a western saloon there's also a little Harmonica in there as well but I really need to take a good look at the credits one of these days you know what I think I will right now *one credits viewing later* okay they don't say what instruments they use in the game though which is a shame because wait a minute.....never mind must have been a different Greg Lee.

Addictive: oh boy was it ever addictive to me back in the day, also I feel I should bring up that like most games in the 90s this featured playable Demos (two of which I've done reviews for full versions of the game, and it looks like I'm going to have to make a request for two more games, sorry Ex Palen)) they were just as addictive as the game in your drive was, and for some reason included in the demo package was a trailer for the Yukon Trail.....why have a trailer for the game you are currently playing?

Depth: This game is actually rather quick unless you talk to people in it, I did a "Talking to People" 4 years back which you can see on Youtube, but I still have to make one without commentary and that might be difficult because all of a sudden I don't have permission to save games in the 98 box. (I just checked the XP box is a little more co-operative but it might be a long time before I can upload it because I like to save the extras now for milestone subscribers) This game also offers mini-game.....you know I'm starting to think that the reason why this didn't get a sequel is because this game introduced kids to Gambling (no seriously in the mini games you either win cash or lose cash....unless you are at the Arcade you don't win money from there the Arcade owner just tells you where the best place to dig for gold is) in reality it's actually No 1 or 2 Bonanza creek both of which are close to Cheechako Hill. But I am sure you were wondering, why would I waste time talking to people in the game? well I would like to pretend that I was doing a Nellie Bly like adventure and was writing a story about the trail, also at Dye and Dawson City and she will offer you 20 dollars in gold just to borrow your journal for the night.

Difficulty: This game isn't very hard to be honest, I'd say it was relatively easy, but if you don't have the hang of it you probably won't be able to get it right, also you gotta take plenty of food because Border reasons (plus they'll ask for 100 bucks), also once you reach Lake Bennet (not Lake Laberge as the people at the start of the game claim) you need to build a boat to get to the Yukon just try to be there before June 20th 1898 otherwise you'll have no choice but to claim Cheechako Hill (contrary to what George Carmack says you will find gold there just not alot of it, oh btw you also meet the Carmack's and Skookum Jim who just so happens to be Kate Carmack's brother, don't look up the Carmack's they don't have a happy ending).

Post review Follow-up: Contrary to what you see in the graphic in the back of the game's Jewel Case, you cannot find Gold Bars at all no matter which claim you stake, this was just a tease to make people want to play the game more often. Why didn't the Learning company take advantage of ALL of the Mecc titles when they got a hold of Mecc's library? they could have made a new edition like they did with Oregon and Amazon trail but no they gotta concentrate on making more Cluefinders games and they bought Broderbund's library And to be fair I hope there aren't any modern day gold rushes (especially since we are stuck in a pandemic) because if you think claim jumpers were bad then, hoo boy they might be even worse in this day and age over 125 years after the Yukon Gold Rush.

This concludes my review, join me tomorrow when I review Timon and Pumbaa's Jungle Games, also tomorrow is when a review will double count for the TdV so expect a bonus review, it will probably be YDKJ for DS.