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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With assistance from
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Cover Artwork
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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)

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 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 | カタキス (43092) · 2011

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

[ 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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Froggy
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Hi-Way
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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. Commodore 64, ColecoVision added by PCGamer77. Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 added by Rik Hideto. Windows Phone added by Sciere. J2ME, Timex Sinclair 2068, BREW, Android, VIC-20, TI-99/4A 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. Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari 5200, Intellivision added by Servo. Game Boy Color, TRS-80, PC-6001, Macintosh, Tomy Tutor, Dragon 32/64 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.