Digital Entertainment NewsNews and reviews from the perspective of the average gamer.

Subscribe to DigNews

Gallop Racer 2006

I’ve been a champion of the Gallop Racer series since the first one made its way to US shores in the heyday of the PSone. I don’t mean I’ve necessarily mastered the game play, but that ever since it has appeared, I’ve campaigned in every way within my power to make sure Tecmo kept bringing sequels over to the US. You see, back in 1998 or so, when the game first debuted on US shores, it was mostly an experiment by Tecmo and one most folks in the gaming press and throughout the games industry thought was doomed to failure.

At the time, it was widely believed that horse racing games were a peculiarly Japanese obsession that would never go over well in the US. Yet that struck me as a completely naïve cultural conceit. Sure, horse racing might be bigger in Japan than the US, in a sense, yet it is not a small matter in America, either. We are, after all, the home of the Triple Crown, one of the top honors in all of horse racing. From the Kentucky Derby to the Preakness and through the Belmont Stakes, the Triple Crown is one of America’s oldest rites of spring, predating even E3 by decades.

Tecmo remained hesitant in its commitment to US releases of the game in the early going, almost reluctantly releasing a second PSone version and, even more reluctantly, an initial PS2 version. While the game has always sold out and become somewhat of a collector’s item, Tecmo has notoriously kept the press-runs low to ensure they avoid the potential exposure of large overstocks. Yet slowly, enough people caught on to the core appeal of the game that Tecmo has settled into the habit of updating the game and bringing it to US shores every year or two. Since the first PS2 version, we’ve been treated to Gallop Racer 2003 – A New Breed and Gallop Racer 2004. Now, this year, with Gallop Racer 2006, they are wisely releasing the game right in the middle of the Triple Crown season.

Gallop Racer 2006 represents a significant redesign of the game. The previous version, Gallop Racer 2004, was a primarily jockey-focused iteration. It’s conceit of placing the player in the role of a jockey who rides for other owners was itself a significant redesign from previous versions in which players could be jockey, owner and breeder all in one. Yet even series fans felt a bit off-put by the 2004’s redesign because it took so much control out of the hands of the gamer. Initially, you only had access to one owner willing to let you ride for him, and he’d only allow you to ride lower-grade horses, making winning a huge challenge, and quite rare.

Gallop Racer 2006 takes a different tack entirely, making it almost a horse-focused game. The heart of the game is Theme Park mode, where you can race horses, breed them and even take on classic races. Most of your racing takes place in the Title Collection portion of the Theme Park. Here, you are given initial funds of $10,000, and are tasked with selecting a horse. Unlike the 2004 version, you can select any level of horse you want, as long as you have the funds to afford it. However, while SS-level horses generally have higher stats than, say, E-level horses, simply selecting any SS-level horse is not necessarily a guarantee to winning races. You still have to study the stats of each horse and decide if their strengths and weaknesses match up with the riding style you prefer to use when you play the game.

For example, the way I like to race is to stay around the back-to-middle of the pack, then have a horse capable of a speed burst in the final furlong or so, and possess enough stamina to maintain it for a strong finish. Therefore, I look for horses that are highly rated in power and stamina, while settling for a slightly lower speed rating. While it may surprise the casual Gallop Racer gamer, a horse rated high in key stats like that could easily be a B- or A-rated horse, and yet be capable of defeating horses that are S- or SS-rated. Mileage will vary from gamer to gamer, however, since their style of play will influence which stats are most important for their horses to be rated highly in.

Unfortunately, Title Collection only allows you to own one horse at a time, so if you get stuck with a horse who can’t win, you’re either forced to retire it early and take a loss, or play out at least three years of its racing career and take a slightly lower financial loss, but add a lot of losses to your career record. This is where the first PS2 version and both PSone versions of the game are slightly more appealing; when you were allowed to own several horses at a time, you could balance out your stable and make so much money with your good horses that the money you lost with your less-successful horses wasn’t as catastrophic to your success in the game.

In the Gallop Station portion of the Theme Park, you are allowed to try your hand at breeding horses to produce the ultimate race horse – the next Seattle Slew. This can be accomplished in more than one way; you can breed horses out of the game’s general stock horses, in which case exorbitant stud and broodmare fees apply for the best horses, or you can use Title Collection to win your way to making a purchased horse a My Horse. If you can collect enough broodmare and stud My Horses, there are much lower breeding fees, but it will take a while to collect that many My Horses. Bred horses automatically get added to your personal stable of My Horses, and you can own up to 100 My Horses at a time.

The final segment of Theme Park mode is Fields of Legend, in which you can take your top My Horses and attempt to win the Dream Series or the Dream Cup, highly-competitive seven-race championship series in which only the absolute best horses can win ’em all. That mode is initially locked until you wins some titles in Title Collection. Still, for those seeking the ultimate challenge, Fields of Legend is the mode to beat. Outside of Theme Park mode, Gallop Racer 2006 tags on a Simulation mode, but the mode does not deliver what that name would lead you to imagine; instead of delivering a more traditional Gallop Racer experience, simulation mode instead allows you to edit and change the tracks and horses. There’s also a versus mode that allows you to race against a second player, and a free mode that allows you to race without all the details of horse breeding and ownership. As always, you can also place bets on your race in order to attempt to raise your personal funds balance.

While all the component parts of Gallop Racer 2006 work better than ever – including a far more detailed printed game manual than ever before, which explains many previously undocumented game elements – though not all – the main problem I have with Gallop Racer 2006 is that very segmentation of the game. The first two PSone versions, as well as the first PS2 version of Gallop Racer 2006, were more appealing in that the ownership, breeding and racing aspects of the game were all intertwined. The challenge of owning and managing the careers of up to six horses at a time kept the game play intense and varied. It was Gallop Racer at more of a “thinking man’s” level of play.

With all the aspects of Gallop Racer’s core game play now segmented out and barely connected, the game may be more accessible to some mainstream audiences, but also provides much less fun and excitement. I’m also not sure that segmenting the game will necessarily capture the imagination of the casual mainstream gamer; after all, you can’t expect someone new to this game to appreciate all the intricacies of how to select a winning horse, so if they choose poorly, how many gamers are going to stick with a loser horse they can’t win with for three to six years of its useful racing career? Not many, I’d wager. I’m sure the thought here was to model the game, in a sense, after other popular racing titles, like Gran Turismo 4. Yet even Gran Turismo allows you to own and race more than one car at a time.

The game’s graphics are as sharp as ever, and 2006 expands upon the “hidden ability” aspect of Gallop Racer, introduced initially into the series when it made the leap to PS2. These hidden abilities reward excellent jockey performance by allowing the horse an unusual speed burst or some other ability not present in normal races. I unlocked that in a horse once and instead of finishing 3/4-length ahead of my nearest competitor, there was a speed-line animation and my horse took off like a jet in the final two furlongs, finishing about five lengths ahead. Such features do add some fun and variety to the game, but also dilute the otherwise simulation-style of game play, adding in an arcade element that gamers will either love or hate.

In the end, Gallop Racer 2006 is still a solid package, even if the design of the game is a bit overly segmented and disjointed. I still regret that Tecmo hasn’t managed to pull off a licensing deal with the US Triple Crown, to add that genuine US horse racing element to the game. But the game does have a lot more US tracks this time out than in previous iterations, which is at least a step in the right direction. I remain firmly hopeful that Tecmo will not back off and will indeed bring the Gallop Racer series to the PS3 in the future.

I simply hope that when they do, they redesign the game again to deliver a slightly-more back-to-basics, integrated design that combines horse ownership, horse breeding and horse racing into a single mode. Also, I think by then, it will be long overdue for Tecmo to finally expand the popularity of the game by adding in an online mode that supports online multiplay racing, tournaments, breeding competitions and more. If they can deliver that kind of experience so that the game works just as well online as it does offline, Gallop Racer PS3 could easily become the most successful chapter in the series yet. But for now, Gallop Racer 2006 is a fun, if somewhat imperfect, farewell to the series on PS2.

[ Post the first comment | View related posts ]

Tags: Gallop Racer 2006

Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on May 25th, 2006 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Enter your email address:

Related Posts

• Gallop Racer 2006
• Gallop Racer 2006

Post a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.