the year was 2005. i was just stumbling into the beginning of my horse obsession right when hidden entertainment AB and pixel tales released a game called "starshine legacy: mystery of the soulriders" to PC for the pony club.

the pony club was a subscription service for kids that sent out a lot of horse-themed books and little horsey trinkets. while i wasn't regularly subscribed to the service i would every now and then receive one of the packages as a gift. you'd get maybe 2-3 books with a little pony club magazine and some type of horse related thing like a necklace or a drawstring bag.

i remember getting one of the pony club packages as a gift and being super stoked when i saw that it came with a computer game. i wasn't really into video games as a kid save for a few that i really liked such as petz or age of empires.

the story basically goes like this: lisa lives with her father and is angsty because her mom is dead and she has to move from the big city to a little island called jorvik.

on lisa's first day at school she encounters several characters who will become main/recurring characters throughout the series. one of them is a girl named sabine who steals one of the other girl's (linda) keys.

lisa finds the keys and meets linda at the stables to return them to her where she meets an unusual horse named starshine who has been sick for a while.

typical horse girl stuff ensues- lisa discovers that she has a magical connection with starshine and she discovers that she can heal him with her powers. the guy who owns the stables decides to offer her riding lessons. shortly after this, starshine is kidnapped by the evil Dark Core corporation for nefarious purposes and lisa has to go save him.

the series is comprised of 4 games that focuses on each of the girls (who are called the soul riders) and their horses that they're bonded with. the first game "mystery of the soul riders" follows lisa, the second "secret of pine hill mansion" follows linda, legend of pandoria follows anne, and the final game "riddle of dark core" follows alex.

i only had the first and third games so for a long time i never knew what happened in the rest of the series. they also did a few little comic books that got sent out in later packages that had some pretty good art.

the rest of the games go more in-depth with the lore of jorvik and the soul rider's connection to their horses. it also tells a little bit about the history of dark core and the mysterious mr. sands' connection to the evil being known as garnok.

after the starshine legacy games were released, hidden entertainment then proceeded to release another 4 games under the star stables series in 2008.

each game took place in a different season. this time it was set in an open world and you got to customize your own character instead of following a specific storyline like in starshine legacy. in each game you start off as a brand new rider and gain experience throughout the game by competing in different competitions and winning the hearts of everyone in jorvik.

there are different chores and quests that you can do to make money in order to buy new horses. each game focused on a different school of riding as well, the autumn rider (cross country), the winter rider (show jumping), the spring rider (dressage) and the summer rider (western).

i don't really remember much about this game because it lagged so bad on my brothers computer and wouldn't even work on my little windows 2000 laptop. it lagged so badly i couldn't get past the first race and i spent the rest of my childhood mad as hell that i couldn't play these games.

as far as i know, these games were a pretty big hit, especially in europe. i'm not sure what happened to hidden entertainment, but it eventually became star stable AB (which had bought out pixel tale, another studio that had helped worked on SSL and star stable)

either way, they soon got to work developing an MMO based off of the star stable games. this is around the time i sort of lost track of it, my cd-roms for starshine and star stable are long lost to time and as i grew older and wasn't able to ride anymore i lost interest in everything horsey.

in 2011, star stable online was officially released in sweden after years of producution. it wouldn't be until 2012 that the game would be available worldwide.

originally the game was going to be a top-down isometric styled game, a vastly different style than the previous SSL/star stable games that HE and pixel tales had put out before. as development continued they switched back to the 3rd person view from previous games.

the game picks up where the SSL games left off, this time including your character as one of the soul riders. the storyline continues and expands further on the history and lore of the soul riders as well as jorvik and pandoria.

there's a lot of side quests and unrelated storylines that take place as well and the game had gotten a lot of positive attention for putting emphasis on having a female main character to provide representation for girls. the game is still around and still pretty popular with weekly updates and the storyline still continuing to this day.

the graphic style and animations have evolved a lot to the point where it's unrecognizable from the games that preceded it. it's still being updated and tweaked to appeal to the newer generation of players, much to the dismay of a lot of the original playerbase.

as a kid i was equally obsessed with horses and fantasy. starshine legacy was such a huge part of my childhood and one of the few pieces of fantasy media i had access to under my strict and religious parents. i tried to emulate the art style (and failed) and was so obsessed with the character alex that i wanted to change my name to alex/would use the name alex for any self-insert character that i made.

these games are probably the reason i started coming up with my own characters and stories. the pony club books in general made me want to write more and as a kid it inspired me a ton. it's such a goofy series to try and describe to people but it was such a huge and important part of my childhood so i'm still sweet on it today and i love getting on SSO to mess around.

a few years ago, SSO uploaded the original star stable games to their website where you can play them in browser. you gotta find the OG star stable games elsewhere though. if you want to play these dusty ass games and get a peek into what was flying around my 10 year old brain you can go here.