Draft:Thomas & Friends: Hero of the Rails (video game)

Thomas & Friends: Hero of the Rails is a licensed video game released on August 20, 2010, for the Nintendo DS and Wii in Europe and Oceania. The game was developed by Silverball Studios, published by Barnstorm Games and licensed by Nintendo. The game was made to tie-in with the release of the 2009 Thomas & Friends film of the same name, despite being available a year after the film's release. The game is narrated by David Holt.

The game was originally scheduled for release in May of 2010, but HiT Entertainment, the then-current owner of the Thomas & Friends brand, pushed back the game by three months. A release in North America by Majesco Entertainment was also planned, but cancelled for unknown reasons.

Gameplay
The game has two game modes, each titled "Story" and "Games". Story is the campaign mode and the main mode of the game, where the events of the film are retold in an episodic format, where clips from the film are used as cutscenes with at least one playable minigame during each episode. The cutscenes in the Nintendo DS version are static images, while the Wii version has moving clips where some of the animation is altered to remove most of the mouth movement. The Games mode is a compilation of every playable minigame, although each one must be unlocked by playing them in Story. Some of the minigames are altered to not be themed after an event from the film, such as the racing or painting minigames.