When it comes to NEOGEO, people will immediately think of several genres. Fighting game. Side scrolling action game. Be it shooters and beat-em-ups. The usual array of sports. You might not think of horse racing, but it’s an arcade platformer that went on sale in Japan in the 1990s. With that in mind, it’s probably no surprise to hear that it’s hosted a few. game based on this sport. The only real surprise is that SNK bothered to bring them out in the West. Latest release in ACA NEOGEO line, bet winner ($3.99)there’s one more surprise: it’s a kind of rule.
Developer Saurus was founded in 1994 and is largely composed of former SNK employees who didn’t want to move to Osaka after SNK closed its Tokyo office. It has worked on several NEOGEO games along with various console ports and is perhaps best known in the West as the team behind Assault team run and gun from the top. Like many developers working on NEOGEO games in the last years of the console’s life, Saurus is really good at flexing the strengths of the old system to create detailed, compelling visuals for the game. its games. Anyway, go to the horse races.
Horse racing is still popular in Japan to this day, but in the 1990s it experienced a particularly big boom. In typical style, everyone and their uncle soon created a horse racing game for the various consoles of the era. Trash bins at second-hand game stores in Japan are actively being filled with horse racing games for the Super Famicom, PlayStation, and SEGA Saturn. Some of those games take a heavy simulation approach to raising and racing your steed, while others are more than just gambling. Staking Winner does what many of NEOGEO’s other sports games have done so well: it’s a sport with many nuances and complex aspects, while condensing it into a fun, easy-to-follow barrel game. close.
The first thing you will do at the start of the game is give your racer a name. Four letters should be enough for anyone, right? You can then choose your horse from a group of colorful characters. They all have their own stats, racing style, and looks, along with a fancy name. With that done, you’re ready to race. There are twelve races in total in the game and you need to rank in the top three if you want to win any money. As an added incentive, not ranking in the top three means you’ll have to put another coin in. However, that doesn’t matter much to us here in the current year with our fancy unlimited credits. Neigh, it’s all about that cash prize pool, which acts as a surrogate score. You will want to do your best to win the top prize in every race.
The race itself is pretty straightforward. You can move your horse with a stick, with a double-tap forward causing it to jostle any horse in front of it, and a double-tap backwards will slow you right down. You have one button to pull the reins a bit and speed up your horse at the cost of a bit of stamina, and another button to whip the horse for a big speed boost at the expense of a lot of stamina. Thats all to have it. The first few races are so short that you can fly through them at top speed without fear of running out of stamina, but after that you’ll have to be very careful about when and where you apply that whip. .
Throwing the wrench into the race is the presence of pickup trucks along the track. Some of these are good, giving you explosive speed or extra stamina, while others are bad, slowing you down for different lengths of time. In case you’re wondering why you would use movement to slow down, avoiding those bad items is a great excuse. The only difference to the game comes from the training segments, where you can earn permanent upgrades for your horse. You will need to be good at these as later races are almost impossible if your stats are not up to the required level.
Although it is far from the usual, especially if you are not familiar with horse racing, bet winner offers all the fun of a good racing game. The core stamina management aspect forces you to consider the track you’re on, and the pickups and other horses add to that important element of chaos making things bitter. You can even play this with another player and it’s a great time. Of course, that is quite difficult to do with this mobile version. You have to play locally and you will need some external controller. I’m just assuming you’ll mostly be playing alone. However, even in that context, bet winner is really interesting.
The hamster has done its usual job with this, and I can almost copy and paste this into these reviews at this point. You have many options to tweak and you can choose between the Japanese version and the foreign version of the game. The usual extras are all here, though they’re not quite as exciting as in a shooter-like game. You can use an external controller to play, although touch controls are mostly sufficient. Double-tapping is a bit annoying to do on a virtual stick, but you can get used to it with a little practice.
bet winner getting some extra credit just for being something a bit out of place, but in itself a really excellent arcade game. SNK has a knack for this type of game and the end result is a horse racing game that I think anyone can enjoy even if they had no prior interest in the sport. I hope we finally see a sequel, 2 . bet winnerbut until then there’s a lot of fun with this great original.
