Best Keiba - Derby Stallion is one of those weirdly addictive NES horse racing sims that somehow makes breeding and training pixelated stallions way more intense than it sounds. You start off picking a foal, naming it something ridiculous (I always go for "Thunder Hoof"), and then obsessively manage its stats—feeding, training, and entering races where the controls are basically just mashing buttons at the right time.

The races themselves are janky but weirdly thrilling, with these little horse sprites bobbing along while the crowd cheers in tinny 8-bit glory. Half the fun is seeing if your carefully bred disaster of a horse actually stands a chance against the AI’s suspiciously perfect racers. If you’ve ever wanted to micromanage a digital horse’s life in under 10 minutes per play session, this is your game.

Just don’t get too attached—sometimes your champion ends up retiring early because the RNG gods said so.