Frogger

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.