Frogger

aka: Highway Crossing Frog, The Official Frogger
Moby ID: 1540

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Critic Reviews add missing review

Average score: 76% (based on 33 ratings)

Player Reviews

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 236 ratings with 9 reviews)

Frogs are not amphibious as far as Konami is concerned

The Good
Frogger is a game that was created in the 80's, and it has a simple objective. The player controls a frog that needs to make its way across heavy traffic to get to the median strip. Then, it must cross a river, stepping on logs and turtles, while avoiding snakes, alligators, and diving turtles to reach one of his five homes. Do this five times to proceed to the next round. You lose a life when you touch a hazard, or fall into the water. If you are keen, you can rescue a lady frog stranded on a log and doesn't know how to get home.

And you do all this within a strict time limit, which only applies when getting a frog into its home, not for the whole round. In earlier rounds, this is easy as the time expires rather slowly, but as you get onto further rounds, the time limit speeds up, and you have to get your frog into its home in record time. This means that you are likely to screw up, whether you are being squashed, fall into the water, or come into contact with the hazards. Vehicles, logs, and hazards also speed up.

The controls are simple to use. One push of the joystick in a direction moves you frog horizontally or vertically. You can't fire at hazards (frogs don't shoot), nor can you stick out your tongue and catch flies. Unlike the games that were made around the time, Frogger offers more ways to die. One example is getting squashed by the traffic, while another is climbing onto a log and let it float off-screen. One thing I like about the frog getting killed is that when he does, he turns into a skull-and-crossbones.

The C64 version is a more-than-average port of the original game. Everything is ported to the game correctly, with the same type of graphics and same music. The river looks indeed like a river, and not like an endless pit, like in the coin-op original. Also, you can see the frog leaping from one place to another, and the animation of the leaping is smooth.

The Bad
I can't think of anything bad about this game. It is a straight-forward port, that captures the look and feel of the game.

The Bottom Line
Obviously, Konami failed to realized that frogs are amphibians meaning that they can live and breathe under water, and programmed the game in such a way that falling into the river means loss of life. Don't let that stop you from enjoying a simple, addictive game that retains the look and feel of the original game as possible. The game is so successful that it has inspired several games that still retains the Frogger name.

Commodore 64 · by Katakis | ă‚«ă‚żă‚­ă‚ą (43092) · 2007

A decent port of the arcade game

The Good
I was introduced to this game called Frogger when I had my old Commodore 64. The game was so popular back in the Eighties that several sequels were made. While most systems around that time had more than one version of the game, the Apple II version had to make do with the only version made by On-Line Systems.

In case anyone had been living under a rock for these past three decades, you are a frog who needs to hop across a five-lane highway then a raging river to reach one of the five berths at the top of the screen. The highway is busy with cars coming from both directions. Getting squashed by one of them results in a loss of life.

You can rest on the footpath in the middle of the screen before making your way across the river. The way to your berth is blocked by logs and turtles. If you make the mistake of jumping off a log too soon or sitting on a diving turtle for too long, you lose a life. Once you manage to get inside one of your berths, you need to guide your frog to the others. When all five frogs are in the berths, you proceed to the next level. The higher the level, the more difficult the game becomes, as you have to deal with other creatures.

The title screen is well designed, with the picture looking exactly like the front cover of the game. I am glad that I was actually given the option of using the keyboard or joystick, since I had trouble playing most of the early On-Line games. I enjoyed watching the animation of the river elements appearing from the left side of the screen.

The Apple II version looks and feels like the original arcade game. Even with the game's poor graphics, I could easily identify the different elements. The popular Frogger theme song is also here, represented by a series of short beeps.

The Bad
It is unusual for any version of Frogger to have the score at the side of the screen. The vertical bar getting smaller and smaller just looks strange. It would have looked better horizontally at the top. Also, the frog is not drawn well; it looks like a spaceship surrounded by a black border, and since when were frogs white?

The Bottom Line
The Apple II version of Frogger is a decent port of the arcade game. Regardless of the quality, most of the elements look exactly the same as its coin-op counterpart. The theme music, despite having only one note played at any one time, sounds good. If you had an Apple II back in the day and didn't have Frogger, you just didn't realize how fun this game was.

Apple II · by Katakis | ă‚«ă‚żă‚­ă‚ą (43092) · 2011

An official version, exciting at the time but overall a bit meh

The Good
Official 6809 arcade game clones were rare. Zaxxon and Pooyan on the CoCo, Moon Cresta on both the Dragon and CoCo, and Frogger, also on both spring to mind. So any official port was always welcome, but if truth be told this was a pretty unexciting version. The graphics are not at the highest resolution possible, going for colour over higher resolution black and white PAL/mono green PMODE 4 colour set. This actually works well, for once the Dragon colour set is perfectly suited for depicting a non space/sci fi setting. The sound is ok for its time, but within a couple of years games like Shock Trooper and Fire Force did so much more on the same machine. Where the game shines is the gameplay. Just like Frogger in the arcade, it is a cute and highly addictive game, albeit one that is pretty easy to clock.

The Bad
If this had been made a couple of years later I suspect we would have had better sound, graphics and a bit more innovation. It feels a bit like a budget release, serviceable at everything, but nothing outstanding.

The Bottom Line
Cheap no frills Frogger. Nothing else need be said. Playable, addictive, but feels more like a budget release than a full blown release.

Dragon 32/64 · by drmarkb (105) · 2019

Don't bash a classic!

The Good
The Apple II was my first computer, and I would play this game on it all the time. Even when I moved on to an IBM 386, then a 486, and then finally a Pentium 1 featuring Windows 3.1, Frogger was still a very very fun game to come back to. This is the 21st century, and after all the spectacular graphics I've seen and gotten used to from systems like Dreamcast, Playstation 2 and Xbox 360, it is indeed hard to take the Apple 2 version seriously. There are plenty of arcades around the country featuring Frogger in its pristine state, and there are plenty of Frogger roms and Mame emulators on the web to not have to sit in front of your dusty Apple 2 and play a version that will make your eyes cry and ears cry.

But don't tell me that it should have never been made. For a good 15 years, it was good enough for us gamers.. For a good 15 years it was an almost perfect arcade-port. The graphics might not be what they used to be, but the gameplay is intact.

The Bad
Really, in those days we all thought this game was perfect, and could play it for hours even after months. The only complaint was there was no sequel!

The Bottom Line
One big nostalgic experience. Everybody loves Frogger just like they love PacMan, Space Invaders, Sabotage, Missile Command, and Centipede.

Probably the best game you could get for the Apple II, along with Sabotage.

Apple II · by Forever Sport (22) · 2006

Good but not great

The Good
The frog-jumping gameplay is all there. Frogger is a pretty basic game, and this version captures the familiar action well.

Sound effects are good, and unlike most O2 games, this one has a title screen with a theme song.

The Bad
The graphics are very basic. I know the O2 is not as capable as other machines, but the graphics do look very clunky.

I also found the joystick controls a bit touchy, and it is very easy to accidentally leap up instead of left. My controllers work fine in all other games, so I think this is entirely a coding issue.

The Bottom Line
The game so good it inspired an episode of Seinfeld!

Odyssey 2 · by Bruce Clarke (60) · 2014

Going on an amphibious adventure

The Good
Back in the early Eighties, people were used to games such as Space Invaders and Galaxian, where they moved their laser left or right across the screen while shooting aliens swooping down at them. Then Konami’s Frogger appeared out of nowhere, and players suddenly found themselves controlling a frog, and they could move up - not just left or right - toward their five homes on the other side within a time limit.

To reach these homes, however, they must cross a busy highway to a median strip, and from there negotiate a river full of logs and diving turtles, and finally into all of their five homes. Fifty points are awarded to the player for reaching one home, but more points are awarded for bringing their lady frog along with them and gobbling an insect. The game starts off easy, allowing players to get used to the game. It eventually gets harder, with the game introducing snakes, alligators, and otters into the mix. The level design also differs slightly and everything is sped up, requiring them to time their moves carefully.

Besides the gameplay itself, Frogger was innovative in two other ways. There are more ways you can die, such as being run over by a vehicle, letting the timer expire, staying on a diving turtle, missing the homes, being eaten, and falling into the river. The gameplay is complemented by well-composed music. As well as the standard songs, the US version of the game has “Yankee Doodle” thrown in for good measure. The animations are brilliant; I like how the skull and crossbones are formed when a life has been lost. The game also has that “just one more go” vibe to it.

The Bad
I can’t find any flaws to this timeless classic.

The Bottom Line
Frogger is a refreshing change from the shooters that dominated the arcades way back in the early Eighties, and it contained many innovative features such as the use of background music and the number of ways you can die. The graphics and sound are excellent, and the game’s addictive nature will keep you coming back for more. Two thumbs up, way up!

Arcade · by Katakis | ă‚«ă‚żă‚­ă‚ą (43092) · 2022

It's just a frog crossing a road and a river. But hey! It's pretty fun too!

The Good
For some odd reason I didn't have high expectations for this game, even though I was aware of its classic status. However after playing it I was thankfully proven wrong, as this is arguably one of the best arcade games ever made, and the ColecoVision port is definitely up to delivering the Frogger experience to home consoles as far as gameplay is concerned.

The main objective of the game is to guide a group of frogs from the bottom of the screen to the top. You'll have to cross a road and then a river, but before you can reach your goal you will have to make your way past cars, trucks, snakes, turtles, crocodiles and other hazards, with each new "stage" adding several new obstacles for you to overcome.

Both strategy and reflexes are important in this game (and they should be important in any respectable action game), because while you have to move quickly in order to avoid getting eaten or squashed, you'll also have to think carefully about where you'll need to go, because you might end up in a dead end or surrounded by obstacles with no way to escape. Since there's also a time limit, you'll have to think quickly and while each stage has basically the same layout, the different positions of the obstacles means you always need to examine it every time you start again. This adds a bit of replay value, somewhat absent in other titles like Galaxian for example where every stage is pretty much the same.

The sound features a very catchy song that I can't get out of my head and nice (not annoying) sound effects. The graphics are less sophisticated than the arcade version, but still respectable.

The Bad
I've found myself coming back to this game many times but then again each play session lasts for about 5 minutes. This certainly isn't the next Final Fantasy so don't expect to spend hours and hours on this game. Then again, that's Arcade gaming for you.

The Bottom Line
In conclusion, I'm not sure how other versions of Frogger are but this one comes highly recommended for its extremely accessible gameplay but fun mechanics. Definitely one of the better arcade games of the time, and thus, also one of the best for ColecoVision.

ColecoVision · by CKeen The Great (160) · 2012

A fun, fun, fun game.

The Good
Just about everything! It's a fun (not to mention perfect) arcade-conversion, with terrific graphics (all things considered), great music, reasonble sound and WAY WAY COOL gameplay. Frogger is a classic. Damn right.

The Bad
Hmm. Maybe the fact that it won't run on newer computers... but that's nothing new.

The Bottom Line
A classic arcade conversion. Get it, play it, like it, or die.

PC Booter · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 2000

An arcade game conversion with no redeeming qualities.

The Good
The gameplay was at least similar to the arcade version of Frogger.

The Bad
The graphics and sound in the Apple II version of Frogger were ugly and annoying. Your frog looked like a pawn in a chess set (it was white not green), and the other sprites and backgrounds were not nearly as colorful as the arcade game. The music consisted of crude beeping.

The Bottom Line
The Apple version of Frogger was a mistake. Ugly graphics and grating sound effects ruined an arcade classic.

Apple II · by Droog (460) · 2003

Contributors to this Entry

Critic reviews added by Alaka, Flu, Scaryfun, Patrick Bregger, Alsy, chirinea, Big John WV, Wizo, Tim Janssen, CalaisianMindthief, Ritchardo, Victor Vance, Grandy02, vileyn0id_8088, Hipolito Pichardo, GAMEBOY COLOR!, Lain Crowley.