Retro Revisited: Tearaway Thomas (Amiga)

If there’s one game certain to obliterate your blitter and crush your copper, it’s Tearaway Thomas. This Amiga exclusive was often touted as an answer to Sonic by gaming magazines at the time of its release (1992), although it’s more accurate to describe the game as a hypersonic parkour-style collect ’em than a Sonic clone. The game came pretty much out of left field as I recall, and remains the only game Nick Frampton and David Hanney ever produced, and even this was written in their spare time.

And it’s not simply the journalistic press that espoused Tearaway as an hommage to Sonic; the game manual itself takes aim at Sega’s mascot by having the race Tearaways – the race of creatures of which Thomas happens to be part of – originate from the planet “CINOS HET GOHEGDEH”.

Delicious honey

Flimsy exposition aside, the crux of the game is a platformer with a strict emphasis on quick reactions, memorisation and time management. Each of the game’s levels is essentially an obstacle course of platforms, ropes and moving platforms, covered with a liberal scattering of gems – which you must collect before time runs out – and baddies determined on obstructing progress. Enemies don’t hurt you as such, but stun Thomas when collided with, robbing the player of precious seconds.

Magazine reviews rightly praised the blistering speed and smoothness of the scrolling when this was released, a showcase for the aging OCS/ECS Amiga chipset. The artwork and animation (Laura Graves) are to a high standard, and the multi-coloured gradients – something of an Amiga staple – and background scenery are easy on the eyes.

While the quest the for raw speed was undoubtedly a success, the pace is so intense it makes controlling Thomas incredibly difficult. Executing the kind of precision jumps and exercising the fine control needed to get through the levels becomes virtually impossible, especially in the later stages. It was hard enough tackling this in the prime of youth, let alone now, when old age and decrepitation has started to take their toll on the reflexes.

Lots of bears…

I tackled the game once before back in 2014, but I barely managed to scrape through most of the levels on that attempt. I decided to revisit the game once again, only this time I planned to collect all gems and earn a ‘Perfect’ bonus on each of the game’s standard levels: no star skips, no excuses – an impossible feat?

The answer is: almost. I do wonder just how much playtesting some of the later levels actually received – colleting enough gems to simply open the exit is difficult enough, but the level of precision and memorisation (not to mention repetition) required to get “Perfect” is close to impossible. It doesn’t help that some gems are hidden inside secret locations, or hidden in parts of the scenery until you run past a specific part of the scenery.

Personally, I think the game would have been massively improved had it been designed without the restriction of lives, instead allowing players to progress to the next level once the current one had been completed, as well as including the ability to re-run previous levels to try and attain the elusive 100% completion.

In many ways Tearaway Thomas has the framework and core mechanics for a game that could, with some tuning, work extremely well in the current gaming arena. Add some achievements and perhaps a medal or ranking system and you have the foundation for a fast and competitive time attack game that would still resonate with a modern audience – if Nick or David is reading this, it might just be time to dust Thomas off for a new adventure!

Author: Alec
PC gamer, C64 fan, Amiga advocate, creator of longplay retrogaming videos on YouTube, occasional wordsmith - follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/Al82_Retro

5 thoughts on “Retro Revisited: Tearaway Thomas (Amiga)

  1. Wow, I just googled for a review of this and didnt expect to find one written in 2020!! :) I’ve forwarded a link to my bro

  2. By the way….. I’m not sure who “(Laura Graves)” is. Nik Frampton did the ingame art and animation as I recall. Maybe Laura did the box art for the publisher?

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