Frogger

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.

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.

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.