My Little Pony: Friendship Gardens

My Little Pony: Friendship Gardens is a G2 CD-ROM game where you customize, feed, train, and raise a pony.

Most of this game is rendered in a 3d artsyle, save for the ponies themselves. Each store in town has its own little mini-game and pony running it.

The most noticeable thing about this game is the butterfly narrator that guides the player through every step of the game, which may be annoying for an adult but this game was not intended for adults

I played this game as a kid, and only beat it once and it broke my heart. The progress of raising the pony you create is measured by how good the pony is by jumping. You can train her in her paddock with various treat incentives, and there's no pony jumping show or festival or markers of progress other than the ribbons you get for levelling up

The one exciting promise of all this work is at the far right end of the map, the castle in the sky. If you train your pony enough, she can jump all the way up there.

What they don't tell you is that if you let your pony do so, you never see her again.

Imagine me, aged 7 or something, sitting at my beige computer clicking the bridge and watching her jump all the way up and waiting with baited breath to see the inside of the castle. But theres no inside of the castle. and its over. She crossed the rainbow bridge

..... Literally. It is a rainbow bridge. a Rainbow bridge all the way to the castle in the sky. Do you remember any of those facebook pictures people would post when their pet died and it would be like "They crossed the rainbow bridge.. I'll see them again someday" or seen death metaphors for children played the exact same. It would raise no flags in my mind if I ever got to see the pony after this

My oldest sister started joking that this was all a scam and if you cross the rainbow bridge you're in leprechaun territory and they have snipers and take down every pony you send in. Then something about it being a glue factory. It put me into some hysterical fits of laughter and made me feel better. I didn't raise anymore ponies after that, though

This game is abandonware, which means that the creators no longer sell or distribute it, meaning they do not profit from it. Because of this, you can download and play it for free if you so desire

_{Special Thanks to the G2 wiki and g3resource-archive-blog on tumblr for the screenshots}