Stakes Winner

Stakes Winner is a horse racing game.

Races can be entered by one or two players and involve eight horses struggling for victory; each of the eight horses (in the order which the game presents them in: White Heat, Hot Sand, Euro Union, Asian Hope, Brave Lady —the sole female one—, Be Silent, US Fighter, Sky Dancer) given for selection is characterized by three parameters (named «abilities» in-game): speed, stamina, strength, all measured in stars from a minimum of one to a maximum of five. Rival horses are not available for selection to the player: their names are, for instance, the ominous- or hilarious-sounding «Mr Devious», «Red Vision», «Sunk Star», «HelpMe», «OhMygod», «Nutseater». The names are also differentiated by being written all in capital letters the latter ones, normally the former.

Before the beginning of the race, while horses approach the starting point, the name of the circuit, course plan, prize money and circuit time record are displayed. During the race, the indicators on the screen are: the course plan (with a moving coloured circular indicator representing the position of each contender), the chronometric indication of time, the horse's energy bar with a line composed of three segments beside it: a red one (that means the horse is in its full strength), a yellow and a blue one (denoting lack of strength); a representation of the horse's face, which portrays its, more or less fatigued or strong status and how intensely it is running.

The game controls require the use of two buttons and the control stick or directional pad: one button controls the reins, for slight acceleration, which consumes a little of the horse's energies. The other one controls the whip, for sharp acceleration: this consumes the horse's force significantly. Should the energy be consumed entirely, racing will have to be given up for a while. Two rapid touches on the joystick or directional pad in the direction of travel allow to force away a horse blocking the player's road to victory; two rapid touches in the direction opposite to that of travel vigorously reduce speed.

Power-up items represented by icons placed on the course may be taken during the race, raising one of the three parameters: power, stamina or strength. Remarkably, money prizes are now in dollars rather than in yen, and remarkably changed in value: whereas YPN 5300 were the reward in the arcade version, $540000 are awarded to the winner of a race.

Horse energy is named «power» in the Neo Geo version, adhering to the original game, while it was renamed to «life» in the Wii version. The console version presents four levels of difficult: easy, normal, hard and MVS.