#games

You’re no doubt familiar by now with Wordle, the easy to learn yet often challenging to win word game that caught fire online, figuratively speaking, a while back.

Or maybe you’ve played a game that’s based on Wordle but focuses on one topic, like Gordle (hockey players) or Canada (Canuckle).

There was a minor flap on the internet (Twitter — where else?) the other day in which a few racing drivers were slagging online racing for some reason or another. It is true that there have been several examples of someone making the jump from PlayStation to an actual car … but it is also true that one does not feel the heat, G forces, and barrage of noise like one would in a real race.

This debate will not be solved any time soon, and will likely still be raging after the coronavirus consumes us all. Our question of the day is simply this: what title was your first experience with a racing game?

This past May long weekend was the unofficial start of summer for a good many gearheads. With cold temperatures and misery falling from the sky (mostly) behind us, it’s time for car shows, warm breezes, and — of course — road trips.

Kids and families have no shortage of attention diverting options these days, what with various tablets and devices approaching commodity-grade prices. But come on — surely someone out there still plays traditional road trip games, right? Right? Hello?

Where’d everyone go?

In 1987, Ford Motor Company published a game for the long-defunct disk operating system universally known as “DOS.” In reality, the software was less of a game and more of a digital showroom that allowed you to demo the company’s 1988 lineup from the comfort of your personal computer. As marketing materials go, you couldn’t have done much better than this for the era, and now it’s a top-rate piece of automotive nostalgia.

Ford Simulator was essentially the car-based equivalent to the CDs distributed by America Online, but before such a thing even existed. The software just had a way of casually showing up and finding its way into your computer room. This was an era when promotional materials were physical and technology had reached a point where the industry could experiment a little.

Tragically, the internet has eliminated this phenomenon like a dog with rabies. You don’t see much physical media at automotive trade shows anymore and any games that include branded models come through publishers that are able to work out a deal with automakers.

However, for almost 10 years, Ford produced a series of computer programs many of us remember fondly — despite being objectively terrible to play.

I’ve played many a game of Buzzword Bingo with equally bored coworkers while stuck in 19-hour PowerPoint presentations, back when I slaved as a tech writer in the software biz. Why not apply this concept to a bingo game for car freaks trapped in a boring rental car on a road trip across one of those states that’s nothing but cornfields?