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)

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

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

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

[ 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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Frogger's Journey: The Forgotten Relic
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Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge
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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.