Riding Star (1998)

Summary
Take part in 10 competitions, each consisting of dressage, cross country and show jumping.

During the "Season"/story mode, Star is the player's horse and also has to be cared for.

Game Design
Top down, isometric graphics, only the horse is animated. During the competitions there is a lot of TV-style commentary.

Gameplay


For multi-player 8 different horses are available. In "Normal" mode too many refusals or falls mean disqualification, in "Training" mode you only get disqualified for leaving the course. There is also a separate training mode, which is simply riding free-style on a riding ground with a few fences.

The horse is controlled via the arrow keys; space bar to jump/salute.

In story mode some horse care (brushing, feeding, cleaning the stable) is done by mouse and Star's condition has some influence on the results.

Differences between Releases
On PlayStation, up to 2 players in Multi Player mode.

Original version
More informations about the game creating process in the interview of Andrew Niere, the creator of Riding Star.

Bundle
It can be purchased as part of the Let's Ride! Champions Collection, together with Equestriad 2001.

Releases
Riding Star was originally released on PC in Australia in 1998. It was then released in Europe with different famous equestrians names depending on the country: first Mary King's Riding Star in United-Kingdom and some other European countries (FR, PT, ES, IT, NL) (1999), then Ulrich Kirchhoff’s Riding Star in Germany (1999), Anky van Grunsven's Riding Star in Netherlands (1999), Alexandra Ledermann : Équitation Passion in France (2000), or Lussan' Nathorst Presenterar Riding Star in Swedish (2001). It was re-released in France as Alexandra Ledermann : Équitation Passion with other publishers in 2007 (Ubisoft, Mindscape). It was also re-released under Riding Star title in 2001 in Germany by dtp digital tainment pool and Green Pepper publishers.

Other
As it was the first title of Alexandra Ledermann Series, it sometimes called Alexandra Ledermann 1 : Équitation Passion.

The portage on PlayStation was initially made for Mary King's Riding Star title in 1999 by Tantalus Media.

System Requirements & Compatibility
OS: Windows 95/98/ME Processor: Pentium 100 Memory: 16 MB RAM Graphics: DirectX compatible 2 MB SVGA graphics card Storage: 250 MB available space

Database

 * MobyGames Entry of Riding Star
 * MobyGames Entry of Mary's King's Riding Star
 * OGDB Entry (German)
 * Wikipedia Entry (French)
 * Entry on Australian Government Classification

Review & Gameplay

 * Review on Jeuxvideo.com (French)
 * Let's Play by Darlinganddeath on YouTube
 * Review by VirtualPwnies
 * Let's Play by Berta Shadowmountain (Dutch)
 * Gameplay by The VideoGames Museum (PlayStation)

Press Article

 * Australia’s Equestrian Games – An Interview with Riding Star creator Andrew Niere, Play it Again 2, 2023