Customer Reviews

Thomas and Friends Trouble on the Tracks

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I highly recommend this for any young Thomas the Tank Engine fan. My 2.5 year old loves this. The graphics are very nice and detailed. As your child completes an activity, he can click on Thomas and go to the next stage of the journey. This is especially for the child who loves James. The activities on the island are: Search for James (James fell off the tracks and the user needs to guide Harold the Helicopter over the island to find James); Collect the Coal; Fix the Breakdown Train; Find James' Whistle; Load the Freight; Locate James' Lamp; Repair James; Prepare James for his Run. It hs 3 levels of difficulty and certificates are kept in the Controller's Office. Beware of the minimum system requirements though - the software states you need at least a Pentium 166 and 32 MB RAM and we have a Pentium 233 and 64 MB RAM and it still runs a bit choppy. And it wouldn't let us do a maximum install which would allow us to play without the CD installed.

Even though the animation and graphics are appealing, the depth of this game barely exceeds that of a birdbath. The tasks are few and simple, and the levels are barely discernable as different. The only reason my kids play this one is because of the catchy songs and images they warmly associate with the well done videos. Of little or no educational value. Hope they try again, perhaps with an education or child development consultant.

When I found this software I was excited because my son LOVES Thomas, but then I read all of the bad reviews and was scared to order it for him. I took a chance and ordered it anyway and LUCKILY we have had no problems with it so far. My son will sit and play it for hours without needing much assistance. I have noticed when you go to Sir Topham Hatts Office and print things out you have to kind of let it do it's thing and not get ahead of it. It will minimize the Thomas screen and return to the desktop while printing but you just have to click on the icon at the bottom of the page to return to the game. The graphics have been very smooth, not choppy at all. When I installed it there was an option for "minimum", "normal", or "maximum" installation. It told me we had enough memory to do the maximum so that's what I chose. I don't know what others used so I don't know if that could be the reason why it runs ok for us. We have a 128MB, 100MHZ computer with a video card that supports up to 2X AGP. I hope other Thomas fans find this helpful to them!

We have all the minimum requirements for this game, and it runs so bad. After about 3 minutes of play, it starts skipping and running so bad that we cannot play it. Returned it for a different one and it still does the same thing...even tried it a a brand new computer and it still ran bad! My 3 year old gets very frustrated!

What a disappointment! I read the reviews posted here, but hoped that my network of systems could accomodate any advanced system requirements necessary for this software. Not so!

I first installed on a 500 mz machine, 256 meg ram, 16 meg video card, etc., etc. It prompted me to install DirectX 7.0, which surprised me because I thought I had it, but I went ahead and installed anyway.

The software continually stutters and skips and then stalls. It seems to be when my son is moving the mouse around the screen while the program is "thinking".

I then installed on my 650 mhz machine, 256 meg, 64 meg Radeon graphics card . . . but I have Windows 2000 on this machine and apparently DirectX 7.0 doesn't run on W2000. I went ahead and installed anyway and the program runs OK, although the graphics aren't nearly as good.

In addition, although the games are new and interesting, they aren't nearly as intuitive as the Great Festival Adventure. Sometimes they don't even make sense.

I'm not sure which one came out first, but this game was quite a disappointment after spending several months with the Great Festival Adventure!

We purchased this software yesterday. We have well above the minimum system requirements of Pentium 166MHz and 32 MB RAM and the graphics, movement and sound are extremely choppy. This one definitely needs some refinement. We are returning ours.

We are running Windows 98 and have a lot of problems with this game. The installation of "Trouble on the Tracks" has severely damaged the operating system on two of our computers, and we have had to spend many frustrating hours on the phone with Microsoft technical support people trying to undo the damage. The Hasbro Interactive phone number listed on the software documentation does not work and their website is "undergoing routine maintenance."

This game was definatley "Trouble" for us. We purchased one and returned it due to the choppiness of the graphics and game instructions thinking we got a "bad" one. When we used the new one the same thing happened! We know it is not our computer. Please refine this game as our son loves Thomas!

This is a very frustrating game. It's very choppy and locks up after a few minutes. We returned the first one, and the second game did the same thing. Try explaining this to a four year old child, twice!

My son first played this game at our local public library and immediately fell in love with it. So, when we purchased our own computer, this was one of our first software purchases. The interaction in the game is great and allows the user the chance to do lots of different things, such as loading coal into a truck or connecting gears in the proper sequence to enable a crane to remove a disabled train from the tracks. It encourages critical thinking from the child while providing hours of fun. The graphics are very bright and colorful as well. Installation on my system was smooth and easy, and I haven't had any problems running the game since. I recommend this game very highly. There are many different activities for both boys and girls, and they will surely enjoy the bright and fun Thomas activities.