♫ Thomas the Tank Engine rolling along
All of his friends will be coming along ♫
All of his friends will be coming along ♫
This is Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends for the Sega Genesis. Released in 1993, it is one of many video games from the Thomas & Friends franchise, and one of my favourites! I think the music and spritework are really nice, and the game is just comforting to play. There are four gamemodes: a mode where you deliver freight cars to stations, a racing mode against an opponent, a free roam exploring mode, and a colouring book.
Objectives
- Clears the "Race" gamemode
- Hardest difficulty
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.10
Notes
- In Race mode, you have to race one-on-one with another engine. In each stage, there are branching paths and you must pick to correct path to avoid obstacles that slow you down.
- Balloons are located in various places on the tracks, and sometimes move left and right. Green balloons increase your speed for a short period of time, meanwhile red balloons do the opposite. It is always faster to grab the green balloons and avoid the red ones. In many places, I have to slow myself down because of the balloon cycles.
- At the start of the race, you can quickly get to top speed by just pressing forwards on the track twice.
- When you win five races, the game rewards you with a gold medal and automatically brings you to the main menu (which I consider to be an ending for the purposes of this TAS).
Edit: Found out that it is actually faster to go through a specific mud patch in Races 1, 3, & 4 and take the speed penalty. This saves between 192-204 frames, depending on the race, but I've had to lose frames elsewhere in order to resync the movie. The differences are as follows:
- Race 1: -192f
- Race 2: -188f
- Race 3: -392f
- Race 4: -588f
- Race 5: -588f
The improved TAS is available in my user files.
RTA Comparison
Video link (Easy): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aJuquR5Uug
Currently, there are no RTA runs of Hard mode. Using RTA timing, this run is 4:46, which is close to the Easy WR of 4:45, set by myself back in 2022.
Comments
Content warning: death
I don't remember a lot of things from my early childhood, but one thing I do remember was my fondness for Thomas the Tank Engine. My family had a VCR and I would watch the Classic Series on VHS tapes, listening to George Carlin narrating fun, little stories about little engines. After watching, I'd sit in silence, listening to the soft buzzing and humming of the tapes. We had these train sets from TOMY, with vibrant blue tracks and battery-powered train toys. My sisters and I would play in this huge, carpeted room in the basement, building elaborate track layouts, making our own stories, and watching the trains chug along with their noisy motors. When I eventually learned what a computer was, I'd watch YouTube videos of other Thomas the Tank Engine train sets, and played games that were on the Thomas & Friends website.
All of this to say that Thomas the Tank Engine was definitely a formative experience in my childhood. Eventually, I grew up and stopped caring about the franchise when I became a teen. I stopped using the VCR. The TOMY tracks were dumped in a plastic bin and stashed away. After learning about the world of licensed video games, I eventually rediscovered Thomas & Friends and was met with a wave of nostalgia. Even today, I still really love the franchise (mostly everything during the Classic Series though). It's lighthearted and cheerful. There's something about it that I just find so comfortable and nice.
I'd like to dedicate this TAS to Britt Allcroft, who sadly passed away last month. She adapted The Railway Series, the book series by Rev. W. Awdry, into the Thomas the Tank Engine TV series I know and love. Thank you for making my childhood wonderful and bright. - Walgrey