there is a certain subset of games that are almost made to be instantly dismissed by swaths of the public. like maybe they could even sell well, but games like handball '16, cabela's survival: shadows of katmai, and zoo tycoon just immediately enter a spot in my brain that says both 'this is simply not for me' and 'there is no way this is good. this is simply chum for the sad folks who this is for'. gallop racer is a game that for all i know i may have seen in every used game bin at every gamestop and goodwill in my entire life and i would have never even noticed it was there. it almost screams 'dont look at me.'

but after i'd played over 100 hours of pocket card jockey, i started thinking to myself that it was time i checked out a real horse game without the incredibly easy solitaire. and this was the only one i could play on my psp so there ya go.

well boy oh boy. this game could not be MORE for me. just really, really do yourself a favor and watch the intro cinematic to this game. its on youtube. and this is not one of those intros where people just say crap like 'why did elmo's gba game intro go so hard??' this game is so fully and authentically up to that level of excellence. the music and menus are so so slick and beautiful. it is incredibly obvious that tecmo had a deep bench of talented and tasteful game makers in the late 90s. i would love to get lunch with anybody who worked on this game.

gallop racer sort of threads the needle between sim style and arcade style. its kind of neither. you can't just buy and breed your way to success, but you can't just race your way to success either. like the worlds greatest jockey isn't going to show in a g1 race with some lame nag. you kind of have to accept this. this is a game where you are finding the zone state and finding the zen of racing. you're doing your best with the horses you can afford, and you're both sharpening each other. you're slowly getting the feel for how your horse likes to race, and your horse is teaching you how you might transfer these skills to your other horses. if you can get into the zone of how to gracefully lose a race you could never win, and if you can learn to get pumped to get sixth place in a race where the odds said you should have gotten ninth, then you are ready for gallop racer. it is only through these trials that you will get good at racing, and it is only through facing these trials that you can really appreciate how valuable a victory is. its a really really cool game.