Champion Jockey

"Horseracing is one of the very few legalised forms of gambling in Japan - so a lot of people are really into horse racing," explained Koshikari at Champion Jockey's recent press event while your correspondent gambled his commission cash away at the Windsor races. "At the same time, there's a large group of people set against it - because of that gambling factor. We wanted to emphasise horse racing as a good sport, rather than the gambling. That's why I wanted to eliminate the gambling side from it."

Champion Jockey is, then, a game that focuses solely on your career as a small excitable Irishman and the horse-based world that surrounds him. As such, away from the game's main course of Holy Grail-esque clip-clop horse-miming, you'll have the roles of Breeders, Owners and Trainers to consider too.

There's also a notable focus on the talents of the beasts themselves. You'll develop your race tactics with the capabilities of your steed in mind - choosing your moment for the final spurt depending on its stamina, for example, and making sure you've selected the right horse for the right sort of race.

With this iteration, however, you won't be able to harness any longstanding dreams of riding the winner in the Grand National or participating in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. For now at least Champion Jockey is taking the Pro Evolution Soccer run up to licensing. Despite clear research being done into stands and lay-outs the actual names of race courses, meetings and individual competitions will be somewhat glossed over. If Aintree is be known as Liverpool and Ascot called something like Royal Berkshire then don't be surprised.

Could this game truly staple a fresh genre onto our collective sports game consciousness though? One worry is the game's accessibility. This is a Kinect game and a family orientated game - but the screens, fonts and general UI look like they've been copied and pasted directly from a Dynasty Warriors title. For a game that has split-screen multiplayer which essentially asks you to participate in bouts of climactic air-spanking, the look and feel of Champion Jockey is markedly hardcore.

The excision of the betting world, meanwhile, is also jarring for anyone who doesn't have difficulty in visualising the look of the scuffs and crumpled betting slips on the floor of their local Ladbrokes.

With Western gaming still going through a golden age of horse material (Assassin's Creed, Red Dead Redemption et al.) and the Japanese past-masters of the discipline in the likes of Shadow of the Colossus, it's also something of a shame to say that Champion Jockey's nags aren't exactly the most realistic beasts ever committed to flat-screen either. What's more, steeplechases especially are about drama, noise and a degree of unpredictably and chaos - none of which really shows through in Champion Jockey's smooth-edged rendition of it.

I personally would dearly love a horseracing game packed full of Euphoria physics animations, dirt flung at the screen and the brays and trumpets of rich people as you thunder over the finish line. Champion Jockey doesn't appear to be that game, but I dearly hope it does enough to maintain a hoof-hold that'll ensure yearly releases, licenses and improvements. That doesn't mean you should put money on it though…