Sorry to say that but the reviewer misses the point completely.
"Ford Simulator" is not a game at all, it was an early (1989 for v.1) and quite daring attempt to use computer-based mutimedia to support sales of Ford cars. Ford and SoftAd were really pioneering what became later the multimedia marketing industry (demo diskettes, then interactive CD-ROMs, and then the Web).
Ford Simulators were not sold (and Ford never made any money out of them), they were distributed in Ford dealerships to the lucky few test drivers who owned a home computer (a scarce resource at the time). As an interative, official catalogue of Ford cars, they had to be updated once a year, hence the number of versions. I admit that, while v1 seemed visionary in '89, version 5 looked quited dated in '94. The cars had been updated, not the concept
A bit of reasearch on SoftAd would have shown that they are still around and operate now under the name ChannelNet.com. If the name SoftAd is not enough of a hint, their story of early visionaries in the field of PC-based marketing is well known and documented. They have nothing to do with the game industry and never claimed to.
|