Frogger

aka: Highway Crossing Frog, The Official Frogger
Moby ID: 1540
Arcade Specs
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Description official descriptions

Your task in this arcade game is to guide a frog across a treacherous road and river, and to safety at the top of the screen. Both these sections are fraught with a variety of hazards, each of which will kill the frog and cost you a life if contact is made.

The road is full of cars and trucks, at variable speeds. The river water itself is fatal, as are the snakes which hover within on later levels. Frogger must use the arrangement of logs, turtles (which are only there for a short time) and alligators (but stay away from their faces), and then jump into one of the open home-cells, ideally one containing a fly for extra points. Once all holes have been filled, you move onto the next, harder, level.

Spellings

  • フロッガー - Japanese spelling

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Credits (Atari 8-bit version)

5 People

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 76% (based on 33 ratings)

Players

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 | カタキス (43092) · 2007

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

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

[ View all 9 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
The reason why Frogger dies when it falls into the water Robin Gravel (1) Aug 14, 2023

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The Arcade version of Frogger appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cartoon

In 1983, Frogger made its animated television debut as a segment on CBS' Saturday Supercade cartoon lineup. On the series, Frogger was voiced by Bob Sarlatte. After only one season, Frogger and the Pitfall Harry segment were replaced by Kangaroo and Space Ace. As of 2008, Saturday Supercade has never been officially released on VHS or DVD.

Graphics

Frogger supports a tweaked CGA graphics mode which is able to create more than 4 colors on the screen by switching color palettes each time the display reaches a particular scan line. This trick only seems to work on true CGA cards, including the Tandy 1000. The game uses this technique to produce blue water and a black road. (Several alternate options are also included, such as a bright green road and black water, though I'm not sure why you'd want to use some of these available combinations.)

This technique has appeared in a few other games, including Jungle Hunt, California Games, and The Games: Summer Edition.

Inaccuracies

In Frogger, if you fall into the water, you die. This makes no sense at all in the real world: Frogs are amphibious creatures, at home in the water as much as on land.

Music

The first stage's background music on most platforms is the opening song to Nippon Animation's 1977 anime series Araiguma Rascal.

References to the game

  • In episode #174 of Seinfeld (The Frogger), George discovers that his high score still remains on the Frogger machine in a pizza place he and Jerry used to go to in high school. In an attempt to rescue the machine and his high score, the camera shows George trying to cross a car-infested street from the same perspective as the game, complete with music.
  • Frogger was popular enough to have a song inspired by it on the full-length Pac-Man Fever album - Froggy's Lament.
  • In the MTV Movie Awards 2003 sketch, "The MTV Movie Awards Reloaded" has the Architect (Will Ferrell) saying that, while having created Q*bert and Dig Dug, he did not create Frogger but he came up with the name for it because it was going to be called Highway Crossing Frog. The last half of the joke is actually a true fact - Highway Crossing Frog was the working title for Frogger.
  • Robot Chicken parodied Frogger once: an enhanced version of Frogger crosses the road and a truck crashes into a car and explodes while people are yelling at each other. He then tells the other frogs that "it's time to cross the street".
  • In season 12's last episode of Fifth Gear, Johnny Smith's Frogger self contained unit is put into an armored vehicle, to test its construction.

Release

The Super Nintendo version was the last game released for the system in America. Excluding 2006's Beggar Prince, it was also the last American game released on the Genesis.

Starpath Supercharger

In 1983, Starpath Corporation released the 3rd game designed for them by Stephen H. Landrum entitled THE OFFICIAL FROGGER for the Atari 2600 Video Computer System (VCS) and licensed to them by Sega Enterprises, Inc. The reason Starpath was able to create their version of the Atari 2600 port was that although Parker Brothers owned the cartridge rights, they did not own the magnetic media rights, opening the door for Starpath.

The game is one of a few cassette based games (living up to the term “tape”) ever released for the Starpath Supercharger. Unlike the first two games Landrum designed for Starpath, this one does not contain a secret way to see the designer’s initials.

Title

The game was originally going to be titled Highway Crossing Frog, but the executives at Sega felt it did not capture the true nature of the game and was changed simply to Frogger.

Version differences

The Xbox 360 version closely resembles the original game, but it has new artwork, modernized sound and music, new bonuses, and new play modes (split screen head-to-head and co-op).

Awards

  • Retro Gamer
    • Issue #46 - #6 in the “Top 25 Atari 2600” Games poll

Information also contributed by Dracula Marth, Guy Chapman, Jeanne, LepricahnsGold, Nélio, NewRisingSun, PCGamer77, Sciere, Servo and FatherJack

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  • MobyGames ID: 1540
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Trixter.

ZX81 added by Rola. SNES added by Corn Popper. iPhone, iPad added by GTramp. ColecoVision, Commodore 64 added by PCGamer77. PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch added by Rik Hideto. Windows Phone added by Sciere. Android, BREW, VIC-20, J2ME, TI-99/4A, Timex Sinclair 2068 added by Kabushi. Genesis added by Alexander Michel. TRS-80 CoCo added by Martin Smith. Arcade added by Pseudo_Intellectual. Game Boy added by Terok Nor. Intellivision, Atari 8-bit, Atari 5200, Apple II added by Servo. Macintosh, PC-6001, TRS-80, Dragon 32/64, Tomy Tutor, Game Boy Color added by Игги Друге. Atari 2600 added by wanax. MSX added by koffiepad. Odyssey 2 added by Psionic.

Additional contributors: Jeanne, Martin Smith, Nélio, Yearman, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, Grandy02, FatherJack, OmegaPC777.

Game added June 2, 2000. Last modified August 30, 2023.