Driving Games at Bowcraft

Everyone drives in New Jersey and when you’re a child, you want to drive too. You play car racing video games. You sit in the family car driver seat and you make driving noises. Bumper cars are always running.  

Bowcraft, which has since closed, had this ride where you drive an actual car on an actual track. We’re not talking that Merry Go Round where instead of horses you sit on a motorcycle or car.

This track had a middle bar so the cars couldn’t go off the track, but it was free enough to drive and swerve and feel like driving. You controlled the speed, but it wasn’t that fast. You control the steering wheel. 

They let you drive the track three or four times each turn. 

In the mid-80s home video game systems brought the big fad of arcades and lone video games to a close. Bowcraft had Pole Position and other racing games. These games were in a stand alone console that was about six foot high with a monitor inside the box. It had an acceleration pedal on the floor and a big steering wheel. You raced around circles on the screens or you rammed other cars. In the early years these were on a black and white screen and the cars were blocks with wheels. Pole Position was color and had road signs and a paved road. It made noise. 

A ten year old can spin the wheel and control the speed or the game like a race car driver. It was a virtual reality driving game years before anyone would invent that word. Being years too young to drive, these games were the thing.

Dad had to drive in the real world to Bowcraft, but then a kid gets to drive the games.