Play The Ford Simulator 1987 Online

I first played The Ford Simulator in 1987, one of those MS-DOS titles that came on a floppy disk and required a little patience just to get running. It was published by a company called SoftWright Simulations, and it fit right in with the era's growing interest in simulation software, even if the hardware could barely keep up. You weren't getting a flashy arcade racer; this was a straightforward attempt to model the experience of driving a specific car, a Ford, on a home computer.

You control the car from a first-person perspective, managing the steering wheel, gear shifter, and pedals displayed on the screen. The main objective is simply to drive properly: start the engine, shift gears without stalling, and navigate a basic road without crashing. The signature mechanics involve managing a manual transmission with a keyboard or joystick and watching a simple, scrolling landscape pass by at a slow, deliberate pace. It's not a fast game, and the difficulty comes from coordinating the clunky controls more than from any complex scenario. Playing it feels like a quiet, slightly frustrating lesson in patience.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".