For years and years, I've been searching for a rare Canadian computer game - and I finally found it. Really excited to get to share Crosscountry BC.
If you grew up here there's a good chance you played Crosscountry Canada at school. This is the local BC version, made just for local schools, and tracking it down was *really* hard.
https://cdrom.ca/games/cancon/2025/03/18/crosscountry-bc.html
It's an educational trucking sim - drive around the province, pick up goods, deliver them to where you want to go. I haven't played Crosscountry since the original one on Apple II way back in the day, but I'm really surprised how *fun* it still is. It's a good game! And getting to drive around all these local cities is fun.
This one was a commission for BC schools. It might not *ever* have gotten sold for home, and if it did it was a very limited release. BC history buffs have been looking for it for years, and it was a really lucky find it turned up at all. It randomly appeared on eBay one day, from what looks like a random thrift store in Coquitlam.
I hope you give it a try, or at least give the post a read. It turns out it really is a charming, weird game with a lot going on. Not many educational games where the manual will tell you how to break the law. https://cdrom.ca/games/cancon/2025/03/18/crosscountry-bc.html
@misty another excellent writeup from one of my favorite writers!!! lets go!!!
@swiftyshq Awww thank you!!
@misty shoutout to thrift shops tbh
@misty omg thank you so much! I missed this one by a few years I guess. We just had regular ol' Crosscountry Canada, but this will be really cool to check out
@misty very much looking forward to trying it out when the CD image gets posted!
@misty that truck is a masterpiece of 3dcg <3
great work!
@discatte Thank you! Feels great to get to share it.
@misty !!!!!! I never even heard of that! (Not shocking as I grew up in Ontario)
@misty "remember... Drive defensively" ... But you can double click the gas pedal to speed.
Man, I remember playing Cross-country Canada in middle school.
@misty how accurately does it simulate getting stuck in traffic coming out of Vancouver at 4:30 pm on a long weekend Friday 😆
@coffeentacos Hah! If only. It *does* actually simulate the Vancouver Island ferry schedule though, so if you get there too late at night you have to wait hours for the next crossing.
@misty nice! That's a good touch.
I don't think I ever played this as a kid, games on our school computers were mostly limited to things like math blasters and some typing games.
edit: Just noticed the year, yeah I would've been in high school at this point and we were playing Worms World Party via local network at this point. Would've been into it had it been around!
@misty @coffeentacos
there's a whole unexplored flash game genre of vancouver island ferry simulators:
- your "reserved" spot was sold to someone else
- you arrived 4 hours early to a 100 car lineup already ahead of you
- watch netflix on wifi @ 2400 baud
- guess that seat stain
@misty Amazing! I played a lot of Cross Country Canada on the Apple ][s in elementary school but did not know about this one! Thanks for sharing!
@misty Cover artist seems to have confused Canada and Australia
@cinebox What do you mean?
@misty The truck is driving on the left
@cinebox Huh, right. I wonder if they flipped it at some point. USA 2 and Canada 2 use basically the same title screen image. But the win screen shows the truck on the right side. https://digipres.club/@misty/114185120157927573
Mar 18, 2025, 9:29 PM@misty I didn't grow up in Canada but in the US my school only had two games in 4th grade or whenever it was we had these classes, one being Oregon Trail (of course) and one being Cross Country USA. I was aware of the Canadian one but definitely didn't know about the BC specific one, so this is sick
@thedaemon @misty
As a Spaniard I would love a similar version to Oregon Trail/CC-BC but across the whole country and in text mode.
I'd guess that adapting the Basic version would be a good start.
@misty I know I did!
@misty I've never heard of this, naturally being from Ireland, but this is exactly the sort of thing I can jam with. Thanks for the write up!
@misty make sure you put it on ia
Mar 22, 2025, 8:03 AM@misty two immediate observations from that title image:
Mar 22, 2025, 8:49 AM@misty whoa!! how fascinating. I never played this—I think it’s juuust before my time—but my computer teacher made his own BC-related game (along with a bunch of other educational ones), similar theme of learning about the province!
@latte Oh wow, that’s also very cool! I don’t hear of many teachers making their own games like that.
@LoadingReadyRun Thank you! Yeah, there's an ISO available on archive.org and Macintosh Garden. It's a hybrid Mac/Windows CD; I haven't tried it on Windows yet, but it works well in MacOS 8.5 or 9 emulators. @ihorner
@misty Terrific! Thank you!
@LoadingReadyRun Let me know if you need any help getting it running! I'd be glad to help.
@misty Oh! That was you that wrote that cool article, I really enjoyed that, thank you
@Canageek Thank you for reading!
@ActuallyAubrey You're welcome! It's been fun seeing how many people on social media played it growing up