Die Reitakademie

Summary
The game puts you in the shoes of a young girl who gets offered a place at a riding academy. You will take theoretical and practical riding lessons (Jumping, Dressage and Western), take care of your school horse as well as follow a slice of life story about making friends and romance in the school.

Game Design
The game features 3D art, of course looking clunky and old today, but I remember it looked decent to me at the time I played it. It features an open world with multiple areas, the academy grounds, a city area and some riding out areas (I do not remember enough details to say if you can always freely access them all).

Riding Mechanics
The most interesting and memorable aspect of this game for me are the riding mechanics: You give leg aids with WAD, weight aids with space and simulate the reins with mouse movements.

Differences between Releases
No idea if the Nintendo version is close in gameplay, I just found pictures of it featuring the same box art. Do not own it.

System Requirements & Compatibility
Minimal Requirements: WIN 98SE / ME / 2000 / XP CPU 1,2 GHz 256 MB RAM Graphics card: GeForce 2 600 MB free disk space DirectX compatible sound card 20x CD-ROM drive, keyboard, mouse

Recommended: WIN 98SE / ME / 2000 / XP CPU 2 GHz 512 MB RAM Graphics card: GeForce 4 600 MB free disk space DirectX compatible sound card 20x CD-ROM drive, keyboard, mouse

Compatibility: Unfortunately, I have not managed to get this to run again on either a Win7 or Win10 (both 64 bit) system. It gives an "error loading x64 driver. did you forget to reboot?" message, that according to various threads where people asked about other games indicates that you are doomed if you don't have a 32 bit system. Running inside a 32 bit XP VM threw a Runtime Error on startup.