Well, the only previous version I had was GR2001, but I did buy GR2006 and it has been fun to play. There are quite a few changes between those versions.
Something that some people don't like on the ORL forums is that in GR2006 you can only race 1 horse at a time. I thought I might not like it either, but now after playing the game for 2 days I like focusing on one horse at a time.
GR2006 features:
It has four modes of play.
VS Mode - This is a two-player mode. It also has a 4-player tournament mode, but only 2 players race at any time.
Simulation Mode - This is basically the editor. You can create new races, horses, and jockeys. You can also edit in game horses and jockeys. You can change the horse's data and can also rename them. So if you want to edit their real names into the game, you can. Changes made to the horses are seen in all other modes.
Free Mode - This is the single race mode. Basically you can pick an in game race or a created race made in simulation mode. Then pick the horses from in game, created in simulation mode, or your horses from theme park mode. Change the race settings and then run it.
***Theme Park Mode*** - This is the career mode and it is fun. You start off with 10,000 points. You spend point to breed horses, race a horse through its career, or bet on races ran by your career horse. You gain points by winning bets and when your career horse retires. Betting can be win, place, show, quinella, exacta, trifecta, boxed quinella, boxed exacta, or boxed trifecta.
In theme park mode, you basically pick a horse and run him from a two year old until he retires. Then you pick another horse or the same horse again and do the same. You can choose an in game horse or a player bred horse. If you choose an in game horse, once he retires that's it. You can't breed from him. Some people on the ORL forums don't like this feature. If you choose a player bred horse, once he retires then you can breed him.
You can unlock additional horses, races, and titles by earning titles. Titles are a list of races you must win.
Breeding horses takes points. You can select from over 100 in game sires and over 100 in game broodmares to make a pairing. Also, you can select any player-bred horse that you have completed running through its career as part of the pairing. You can only find out all the new foal's abilities and data after racing it through its career, but are given its general abilities when it is born.
Bred horses have a listed pedigree that goes back four generations. Abilities can be passed down from generations or developed while racing a horse. Some abilities can be upgrade into better versions while racing the horse. You can have 100 player-bred horses stored in game.
When you retire a horse you earn points from how well it did. The amount of earnings it won, wins, G1 wins and longest winning streak are converted into points. You might also lose points for retrying a race during a horses career, however you do get bonus points for not retrying any races.
The start meter is new. It consists of two arrows that you have to get as close as possible to get a good start. Different horses have different speeds for the arrows. During the race the arrows represent the horse’s speed and the speed at which the jockey is trying to make the horse go. Instead of just a whip action, you can now use normal whip, shoulder whip, or just show the horse the whip.
There is tons of information that is displayed and recorded. When you retire a player breed horse it records information on the last 20 races it ran.
Edit: Here is a link to my stable (dynasty) on the ORL forums.
http://p083.ezboard.com/fgallopracer...picID=26.topic