Try an edge card, Shanthi 
You can get one through Cingular. They work on mac or pc, but you have to have a pcmcia slot on your laptop. You might have heard about em, its a card that contects you into a cell site like a cell phone.
That’d be cool, though for now my wireless router works fine. 
If I’m online I generally want to be inside with a computer desk and such, so I don’t really need to pay to be able to get online from the middle of a pasture (though that would be cool 
).
I got my game today. There’s some good and bad in the game. I played it for about 2 hours in Stable Mode.
POSITIVES:
Graphics: I thought the graphics were very nice. Very realistic looking, weather conditions looked cool. Tracks look like real ones.
Betting: If you like to wager on races, this game is great. Has all the exotic bets to choose from (exacta, trifecta, doubles, etc.).
Race Call: I thought the track announcer was a good point. Given the complications involved with having a track announcer call the race, it was pretty good. Yeah, it’s certainly far from perfect, but I thought it was cool to hear Durkin and some of his catch phrases.
Training: One thing I thought Gallop Racer was lacking, at least in my version, was training. There’s options for various training including a pool swim for injured horses.
Claiming Races: Nice to be able to claim a horse.
NEGATIVES:
Racing: It seems like you don’t have much control over the horse. I don’t like the whip feature, you don’t decide when to whip.
Stable Mode: There should be an option to skip an entire race day. If you don’t have a horse running and aren’t betting on the races, you can’t skip the day.
Silks: Not many options, only 6 styles to choose from.
Overall, I think it is a pretty cool game. I haven’t tried breeding or racing against former champions, and the only mode I’ve used is Stable Mode. Any new racing game is an interest to me, lol, and this is a refreshing change from Gallop Racer. Hopefully, they will continue to make new Breeders’ Cup games that are improved and have some good changes. Since this was their first release, I would think that they will get better as they go on.
That makes me feel better. Greg’s picking up my copy today sometime so once I get back from volunteering tonight I’ll give it a play and add more impressions.
Glad to see it’s not necessarily a total wash. Maybe we all just had too high of hopes for it (a common thing when it’s one of the few racing games we’ll see this year).
Well since we are on the subjects of Games There appears to be abother gallop racer comming out. “Gallop Racer 8: Live Horse Racing”
There are some comments about this game, both good and not so good. Just thought i’d post it here since we’re talking about video games…>> -shrugs-
Yeah, I think I definately tend to have very high hopes for new games. Unfortunately, that may set you up for disappointment. I’m just glad I get to play another horseracing game, other than Gallop Racer.
I actually recieved my copy today, for PS2. The race call was a lot better, which was a nice change from when I played my friends, which was on XBox. I can deal with the lack of racing technique in the game.
I just hate the fact that I was able to beat Citation with a $20k claimer.
Another strike for the game. Distribution is ridiculous. Game Stop was supposed to recieve the game 9/23…now is 9/29 and they are saying it will be coming 10/3 at the earliest.
EB Games was reported to be getting it on 9/28…now they won’t be getting it till 9/30 at the earliest.
This game was doomed from the start.
Yeah, I live about 15min away from Bethesda, so assuming they’re shipping out from there, it should be super fast. The EB Games by my house didn’t have it today when I went to check, and their computer system lists tomorrow as the release date, even though originally it was 9/28 and yesterday it was 9/29.
I ordered directly from Bethesda, and received my game on Tuesday. If you’re willing to wait for it to ship to ya, I guess this would be a better option than waiting for it to come to the store.
True, but ordering directly from them costs $5 more AND you have to pay for shipping. For a game that’s getting decidedly “enh” reviews, I’ll wait until it shows up in the store. (Esp. since 1) I haven’t actually played through G1 Jockey 3/Gallop Racer 2001/Gallop Racer 2004 completely yet 2) Work is insane so I have little/no time to play right now)
I just got it today, and have been playing for a few hours, and all I have to say is: Puke.
I have found SO many bugs in this game, which is selling (albeit cheaply) around the country as a “professional game”. For example, I just ran in a race and my horse got injured…however, in the end-of-day summary, it listed the LAST injury that a horse of mine had gotten, not this injury.
The list of jockey colors/blocks at the bottom of the race screen for the top 4 leaders is always off, and Tom Durkin’s call is nonsensical. i.e. “Horse A is passed by Horse B…Horse B passes Horse A.” Or better yet “Horse C is STILL leading!” when in reality, Horse C was in 4th for a furlong or 2.
Breeding seems completely random and pointless…I bred 2 Dirt horses (one mid, one long), and got a Turf Sprint horse…WTF?
The “Tutorials” section is completely useless…in my game, at least, the sound is choppy for half of it, and it’s completely non-helpful. What would be helpful would be to explain (to a non-racing afficianado) what “Timings” mean, and what “Calls” mean…even as someone who knows racing (somewhat), I can only guess that those are the fractions the horse set in the race (though 105 doesn’t make sense, unless it’s actually 1:45.0?), and the position the horse was in during the various parts of the race.
Like the person Juli quoted above, I’ve found that you can at least place in the top 3, if not win, 100% of the time if you just sit in the top 4 for most of the race and then surge forward with 3 furlongs left to go. I currently have 2.8 million and 6 horses from following this strategy.
I don’t know…this is a “fun” game, in that it’s vaguely amusing as a diversion for a half-hour or so, but I find it amazing that this is actually a “real” game…maybe my job has taken over my life, but if I can notice these obvious bugs, you’d think they’d have noticed them, too, before declaring the game complete/ready for production.
Oh, and is it just me, or do the horse graphics for races look like half-Arab/half-gazelle type things with broken forelegs and rubber hindlegs?
Anyway…I noticed a bunch more stuff that I dislike (training has no apparent effect, horse odds don’t seem at all tied to their quality/past performances, and so on), but I’ll stop here for now.
After playing a few more times, I kinda agree with you Shanthi. I am not very motivated to play it very much, in contrast, I was constantly wanting to play Gallop Racer. It seems they may have rushed it into distribution in time for the Breeders’ Cup races at the end of October. Well, I can only hope if they put out new versions that they will put alot more time and effort into the game. Sorry if I may have influenced anyone in buying it and they aren’t happy :roll:. Unfortunately, my hopes were alot higher than the actual product could live up to.
Oh yeah, and the best “feature”? Saving doesn’t seem to work properly. I reloaded once after going through the tutorials, and it had erased a win for one of my horses, and now I reloaded again after challenging Citation (and winning 
), a horse is just gone from my stable…how nice!
Yea, the game is amusing, but it gets old. Especially afteer you have to hit ‘skip race’ eight times for every race day if you don’t have a horse in a race.
The bugs in this game are ridiculous. While racing I’ve pushed another horse into the other track, that was in the center, which ended up allowing that horse to win. :evil:
Race results records are screwy. Whenever I look at one of my horses previous races 9 times out of 10 the date for that race is either the current week, or a few weeks ahead.
While racing I can be on the lead, 10 lengths ahead of the pack, and it will say I’m in 7th place. Most of the time if you claim an unraced horse in a claiming race the horse will have a 0-0-0-0 record when he gets back into your stable.
Breeding is ridiculous, totally pointless. The champions are to easy to beat, Funny Cide beat me once, but that was my own fault because I wasn’t paying attention. Ruffian so far is the only horse who has given me any challenge, she beat me soundly once and I only won by a nose the second time. Other than her though, I can beat any of the horses by a good 10+ lengths.
The horse I recieved upon starting, Hopeful Angel is unbeatable so far. I’ve raced her at every distance over turf and dirt, no one has come close to beating her yet.
My first year I won 4 of the 8 BC races.
And yes Shanti, the horses do look funny, though as sad as it is, I prefer them to GR2004/2003 horses. I love GR but the graphics are to cartoony for me anymore.
This game had so much potential, whoever decided to sell it when they did was seriously wrong considering the obvious/numerous glitches. So many things could have been added to the game; race replays, track records, end of the year awards, more realistic controls of the horse, choice to change equipment, more than blue/orange for blinkers (other than the champions of course), the thing that really made me laugh was the horse colors, bays are chestnuts, a couple of the champions are the wrong colors, Tiznow has a little star, not his long blaze.
I’m also just on my 3rd season, I have over $20 million.
Tom, I think the reason that both of us are eager to play Gallop Racer is because there’s a challenge. I only got through season 9 or so on my first run-through (starting at easy and working up to hard), but now I’m on season 3 of my new hard-from-the-start game, and it’s still interesting, even though I’m occasionally racing the same horses as before (but I love Easy Traffic and Night Falcon, so who can complain?)
I’ve also been playing G1 Jockey 3 recently…I’d given it up for a while because easy level was a joke, but the other 2 levels were nearly impossible. I’ve now worked up to a normal level game, but am still struggling in my first year.
With this game, there just doesn’t seem to be much point. There are no horse of the year awards, you don’t get anything for owning/riding nice horses, you don’t even seem to get anything for winning Cup races, besides a trophy (whoop dee doo), and winning is insanely easy to do. Oh yeah, and you can’t breed the nice (sort of…given that winning is easy) horses that you race. So basically there’s no incentive to keep playing, really…once you figure out how to win, you can just keep doing it over and over until you get bored (which hasn’t quite happened for me yet, but I haven’t gotten through my first season yet).
I think I may just take this game back for a refund tomorrow, given that the sound is totally choppy/inaudible on my copy. (And the minor detail that I don’t think this game is really even worth $20, given all the bugs/stupidness )
I guess, just like SIM games, I’ve gotten my standards set too high for most normal games. (Which, sadly, means that I have no choice but to attempt - eventually - to create my own game…if only I could afford to take time off and actually learn to do 3D animation!)
Oh yeah, and is anyone else bothered by the fact that, post-race (during the stupid jockey-petting thing), every horse looks like it either took a long roll in the dirt or suddenly grew a shaggy/dirty winter coat mid-race? (Or, maybe, got a hunter clip during the race?) That’s just rather weird to me…
Oh, and that’s really sad that you can push a horse onto another track, Juli. I’ve accidentally raced “in” the rail before, but I’ve never actually gone through it. (Though I will admit - using the joystick to control a horse is an ubercrappy idea, unless they lower the sensitivity A TON…you breathe on the thing and the horse moves all the way across the track, it seems…)
Yea, I had gone in it once, then I pushed another horse through it, I think I also lost that race because I was laughing to hard.
Yeah, that’s probably it, the challenge aspect. I’m not sure how far I am in Gallop Racer, but it is many seasons in the hard level. To be honest, though, I almost always win the jockey earnings and wins at end of year. I have like a Win percentage of 65%. So, I am kinda getting bored with Gallop Racer. But, you can always breed new horses, and I am always eager to race a home bred . I’ll have to look into getting the new Gallop Racer when it comes out. You know, I would agree, I don’t believe it is worth what I paid for it, but not so sure how easy it will be for me to get a refund for a used game. I may have to live with it.