Thoroughbred Horse Racing remains one sport which has yet to gets its due in the world of videogames. Fans of the Sport of Kings know how much depth and excitement horse racing offers, but transferring that into a great game has been a challenge.

The current benchmark is Tecmo's Gallop Racer series on the PS2. The problem with that game is that it's a bit too cartoonish for some, has some realism issues, and is based primarily on racing in Europe and Japan. American racing fans want the Breeders' Cup and the Triple Crown in their racing games and Gallop Racer, as good as those games are, do not offer fans of the American turf the setting that they want.

This was the primary reason why NTRA Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships (Breeders' Cup for short) was on the radar for fans on this side of the pond when it was announced earlier this year. Not only was the game based on North American racing but it also had the actual NTRA (National Thoroughbred Racing Association) license to go along with it. The idea of racing at Belmont Park with real track announcer Tom Durkin calling the races was something no fan wanted to miss.

Unfortunately Breeders' Cup, even with the NTRA license, is no Gallop Racer. It's really not even close. There are both basic horse racing realism issues as well as technical design problems that keep this game from reaching its potential.

There are several modes of play from Quick Race to a Day at the Races, but the meat of the game is its Career Mode, and it is here where things tend to fall apart. You start your career by choosing your stable silks and color pattern. You only get a measly six basic designs, which is just weird considering the amount of data today's console games can handle.

Finally you get to your barn where you have one two-year old horse waiting to be trained as the next champ. Your stable has room for six horses which you can get via Claims (claiming a horse out of a claiming race) or via breeding -- more on that in a minute.

The game starts in "January" and theoretically never ends as you can race multiple seasons. The first realism issue pops up in the first five minutes of play when viewing the race calendar. You can enter your two-year old horse in a mile and a quarter race on the grass in January. Non-race fans may wonder what the big deal is. First off, two-year olds don't start racing until April at the earliest because they're too young. Second, two-year olds race very short distances when the season starts and rarely race over a mile. To a non-racing fan this probably isn't a big deal, but to someone that knows the sport even a little bit, it raises a red flag.

The problems continue as you are allowed to enter Stakes races early in the year for vast sums of money, even before your horse has had any starts. The competition is equally light-raced so you're going to see races for $500,000 with un-raced two-year olds making up the field. This is like playing in the Super Bowl before the football season starts. It just makes zero sense.

The calendar and schedule issues continue as you never get to see the upcoming events so it's impossible to plan out your season for your horses. This was a great feature in Gallop Racer and it would have gone a long way here.

One of the best features in Gallop Racer is the way it handles breeding. In that game, you used your retired horse to continue its legacy on the track after it retired. Breeders' Cup has breeding, but it's as generic as vanilla ice cream without the cone. The horses in your barn don't do the breeding; when they retire they are simply sold off for money. Breeding is done by simply entering the breeding section and picking a stallion and a mare and paying a fee. You can do it as much as you like as long as you have money and stable space. Why the game doesn't allow for you to breed your own horses is a mystery but you'd think that they would try to mirror the best parts of Gallop Racer, which is the game's main competition.