Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends

There are hundreds and hundreds of characters on TV aimed directly at the younger ones of the house, and that makes it one of the toughest markets to get in. Thomas The Tank Engine is a character that's been able to withstand the test of time for a while now. And that's why it would probably surprise you to know that there's actually a fully-fledged game SNES and Sega Genesis back in the day called Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. Now, when you think of train games back in the day probably A-Train comes to mind. And while there are some similarities, there are enough differences to set them apart by a big margin.

About the game

Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends game is a game composed of multiple minigames, and you get to access them all from a central base game. However, this central game is a very basic thing where you have some sort of small train track with Thomas riding it. Using the D-Pad you are more around and you'll have to complete some small tasks from time to time to access the mini-games.

Basically, every stop in the game represents a mini-game, but you'll also have to keep an eye out for the signals on the road. Overall is a pretty basic game, but it's what you'd expect from the source media.

Is it challenging?

Well, it really depends on who’s playing the game, and since it certainly isn’t aimed at adults, it’s all up to the kids. There are difficulty levels you can choose from so even the not-so-young kids could get to enjoy playing these minigames. But even with the difficulty levels, you can choose from, we can only really recommend this game to the youngest ones. If the kid is about 10 years old then this game will be too easy, and since it's so easy, then it becomes boring in no time.

Gameplay

The gameplay quality in Thomas the Tank Engine varies greatly depending on which mini-game you are playing. Some of them with simple mechanics work great, especially since there are somewhere you only have to choose for which path should Thomas go. Of course, they add cute details to make it more interesting, so it's more like a choose our own adventure mini-game. But other games will require actual input from the payer, and those are the ones that don't work well. The controls are unresponsive and movements are chunky and just overall awful.

Thomas the Tank Engine is a cute game aimed directly at the youngest ones in the house. It's not a challenging game at all, except when you have to fight with the actual controls to make the game work properly. There are some nice animations in the game, but sadly none of them are present when you're actually playing Most of the gameplay animations are chunky and don't look good. For some reason, they went and added voice acting, which has an awful quality, so it's more of a negative thing.

Pros

• Cute character models
• Some Nice minigames

Cons

• Bad animations
• Bad controls
• Repetitive gameplay