G1 Jockey

In the world of videogames, a place featuring all kinds of strange titles, horse racing games are a niche oddity. They are, for some reason, massively popular in Japan where they not only pretend to be jockeys at home but visit arcades for realistic sit-down games. They’re mad for ‘em.

G1 Jockey is the daddy of them all, a painfully faithful simulation of the sport that goes to great lengths to be as realistic as possible. It’s a racing game and the natural urge is to go as fast as possible for the finish line, but in G1 Jockey that will result in last place every time.

These aren’t cars you’re driving, they’re animals, and in G1 Jockey these animals have limited stamina and various stats that affect their performance. Some horses like to be in the middle of the pack, so if you take them too far out their motivation drops and you lose speed. All the attributes have to be carefully balanced with clever use of bursts of speed in order to win.

But the racing is only one part of it, you’ve also got a complex management simulation going on where you have to buy and breed horses and manage your own stables. This is a whole other layer to the game, and something that can get quite complex, making it unsuitable for casual players.

One place that G1 really succeeds is in the controls, which manage to not only be simple enough for anyone to grasp but also really fun. The Wii controller is your whip for making the horse increase speed, while the Nunchuk attachment is used to control direction. It’s easy to pick up and really effective.

Verdict: 82%

This is an odd game that will only appeal to a niche market, but if you like this kind of thing then it will definitely fill that horse-shaped void in your life.