Another test blog (so there are two tests)

I've been obsessed with horses since I knew what they were. I was always that weird horse kid. The margin of every notebook was filled with horse doodles and I had a stable full of Grand Champions (and later, when I got more sophisticated, Breyers).

Rox Dene was my favorite
mostly because she looked like my imaginary horse, Diamond

Every year for Christmas I asked for a pony, but since ponies are a little hard to fit under the tree I usually got every other horse related thing you could imagine. My favorites were definitely the horse computer games. The 90's were resplendent with tons of horse games and I had pretty much all of them.

One of the first ones I got was Mary King's Riding Star.

I loved this game but good lord, was I bad at it. For some reason, I could not figure out how to time the jumping right. My character was constantly falling off. Luckily these were old eventing rules so I could get back on after I fell off, and continue after a lot of refusals without eliminating. I could never finish the main story line, but it had a fun multiplayer version where you could take turns with your friends!

My dad thought this game was hilarious because there was a really judgmental British announcer who would talk shit about you if you screwed up. It was fun though, despite being eliminated from every event,  because there was a 'caring for the horse' part where you groomed them, cleaned their stall and fed them.

One of my favorite horse games when I was young was Barbie Riding Club. I think one of my aunts got this for me, and I wasn't expecting to like it, BUT IT WAS AMAZING.

You had a bevy of horses in the best colors to choose from, that you could name, groom, and feed treats too:

The rest of the game was about completing missions and trail riding. The missions were anything from cleaning up debris on the trail, to beating the pants off your friends at races, to finding clues to solve a mystery.

I freakin' loved this game. And you know what? I'm not ashamed to admit it. I'd board at Barbie Riding Club if I could. It has an amazing trail system with jumps. Apparently they all wear show coats every day too so I could wear my purple coat on the regular and never feel weird about it.

The last game I wanted to mention I played right up until it no longer worked on my computer anymore. It was Equestriad 2001.

This was based on the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, and you could compete at Rolex, Burghley, Badminton and Sydney. The horse and riders you could choose from were all real team members, including the O'Connors, Ian Stark, Pippa Funnell, and Phillip Dutton (back when he was still an Aussie!!)

You rode all three phases, and could ride in different weather conditions. Once you got the hang of it you progressed in difficulty and the courses got longer and harder. I spent a really inordinate amount of time trying to fix my OS so it could back play this game. Stupid Windows XP. My life was never the same.

The game also, for some reason, had a bunch of really hilarious cheats. You could hack your horse to be really super tiny or huge, or launch you a mile if you fell off. It really made me giggle to see Karen O'Connor pinging 40 feet off Prince Panache into another jump. Whoever designed this game deserves a medal. A gold one.

No Olympians were injured in the making of this game.

I had so many more but these were definitely the most memorable to me. Did any of you have the same ones? Any others that were your favorite that I didn't mention? Was I the only one playing Barbie Riding Club???