Frogger

Frogger
Screenshot of Frogger
Developer(s)	Konami
Publisher(s)	Sega/Gremlin
Platform(s)	Arcade
Release date(s)	1981
Genre(s)	Overhead View Action
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Cabinet	Upright
CPU	2x Z80: Z80 (@ 3.072 MHz) Z80 (@ 1.78975 MHz)
Sound	Sound CPU: Z80 (@ 1.78975 MHz) Sound Chips: AY8910 (@ 1.78975 MHz)
Display	Raster, 224 x 256 pixels (Vertical), 99 colors

Frogger is an arcade game introduced in 1981. It was developed by Konami, and licensed for worldwide distribution by Sega/Gremlin. The object of the game is to direct frogs to their homes one by one. To do this, each frog must avoid cars while crossing a busy road and navigate a river full of hazards. Skillful players may obtain some bonuses along the way. The game is regarded as a classic from the golden age of video arcade games and was noted for its novel gameplay and theme. It was also an early example of a game using more than one CPU, as it used two Z80 processors.^[1] Frogger is still popular and versions can be found on many Internet game sites.

Game play

The player starts with three, five, or seven frogs (lives). The player guides a frog which starts at the bottom of the screen. The lower half of the screen contains a road with motor vehicles, which in various versions include cars, trucks, buses, dune buggies, bulldozers, vans, taxis, bicyclists, and/or motorcycles, speeding along it horizontally. The upper half of the screen consists of a river with logs, crocodiles, and turtles, all moving horizontally across the screen. The very top of the screen contains five "frog homes" which are the destinations for each frog. Every level is timed; the player must act quickly to finish each level before the time expires.

The only player control is the joystick used to navigate the frog; each push in a direction causes the frog to hop once in that direction. On the bottom half of the screen, the player must successfully guide the frog between opposing lanes of trucks, cars, and other vehicles, to avoid becoming roadkill.

The middle of the screen, after the road, contains a median where the player must prepare to navigate the river.

By jumping on swiftly moving logs and the backs of turtles, the player can guide his or her frog safely to one of the empty lilypads. The player must avoid crocodiles, snakes, and otters in the river, but may catch bugs or escort a lady frog for bonuses. When all five frogs are directed home, the game progresses to the next, harder level. After five levels, the game gets briefly easier yet again gets progressively harder to the next fifth level.

There are many different ways to lose a life in this game, including:

1. Running into road vehicles
2. Jumping into the river's water
3. Running into snakes, otters or into a crocodile's jaws in the river
4. Jumping into a home invaded by a crocodile
5. Staying on top of a diving turtle too long
6. Drifting off the screen by sitting on a log or turtle too long
7. Jumping into a home already occupied by a frog
8. Jumping into the side of a home or the bushes
9. Running out of time before getting a frog home

Frogger is available as a standard upright or cocktail cabinet. The controls consist solely of a 4-direction joystick used to guide the frog's jump direction. The number of simultaneous players is one, and the game has a maximum of two players.

The game's opening tune is the first verse of a Japanese children's song called Inu No Omawarisan (The Dog Policeman). The song remained intact in the US release. Other Japanese tunes that are played during gameplay include the themes to the anime Hana no Ko Lunlun and Araiguma Rascal.

Legacy

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".^{[citation needed]} In addition to inspiring numerous clones, this game inspired an unofficial sequel by Sega in 1991 called Ribbit which featured improved graphics and simultaneous two-player action.

Ports and clones

Like many arcade games of the period, Frogger was ported to all the major home computers and consoles of the time. Parker Brothers received the license from Sega for cartridge versions, while Sierra gained the magnetic media rights. Several platforms were capable of accepting both ROM cartridges and magnetic media, thus these systems received multiple versions of the game. Sierra also sublicensed their magnetic-media rights to developers who published for systems not normally supported by Sierra (e.g. Cornsoft published the official TRS-80 and Timex Sinclair 1000 ports); because of this, even the Atari 2600 received multiple releases: a cartridge from Parker Bros. and a cassette for the Supercharger from Starpath. The Tomy Tutor version was directly licensed from Konami themselves, although it is not clear if they developed it.

Parker Bros. produced cartridge ports of Frogger for the Atari 2600, Intellivision, Atari 5200, Colecovision, Atari 8-bit computers, VIC-20, and Commodore 64. Sierra released disk and/or tape ports for the C64 (which as a result ended up with two versions of the game), Apple II, the original 128k Macintosh, IBM PC, Atari 2600 Supercharger, and the above-mentioned versions for the TRS-80 Color Computer and Sinclair developed by UK-based Cornsoft.

In addition to these official releases, there have been numerous unofficial clones including Froggy for the ZX Spectrum released by DJL Software in 1984, Acornsoft's Hopper (1983) for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron, A&F Software's Frogger (1983) for BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum, Solo Software's Frogger for the Sharp MZ-700 in the UK in 1984, and a version for the NewBrain under the name Leap Frog.

Hasbro Interactive released a new version for Microsoft Windows and the PlayStation in 1997 (in this game, Frogger is green with an orange stripe). The ports to the Mega Drive/Genesis and Super NES in 1998 were the last games released for those consoles in North America. A Java port of the game is currently available for compatible mobile phones.

A prototype game based on gameplay elements of Frogger was developed for Sega Game Gear, but never released—presumably due to legal issues between Sega and Konami. The prototype wasn't a direct port of the arcade game, as it had additional features and redesigned levels.

In 2005, InfoSpace teamed up with Konami Digital Entertainment to create the mobile game Frogger for Prizes,^[2] in which players across the U.S. compete in multiplayer tournaments to win daily and weekly prizes.

A port of Frogger was released on the Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox 360 on July 12, 2006. It was developed by Digital Eclipse and published by Konami. It has two new gameplay modes: Versus speed mode and Co-op play. Some of the music, including the familiar Frogger theme, was removed from this version and replaced with other music.

The 1981 Atari 2600 game Freeway is often considered a clone of Frogger, but both games were developed independently of the other, and both were released in 1981. Freeway, too, had a similar working title as well, "Bloody Human Freeway".

Sequels

Unlike the arcade version, the home versions had numerous sequels, including:

• Frogger II: Threeedeep! (1984)
• Frogger 3D (1997)
• Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge (2000)
• Frogger: The Great Quest (2001)
• Frogger's Adventures: Temple of the Frog (2001)
• Frogger Advance: The Great Quest (2002)
• Frogger Beyond (2002)
• Frogger's Adventures 2: The Lost Wand (2002)
• Frogger's Journey: The Forgotten Relic (2003)
• Frogger's Adventures: The Rescue (2003)
• Frogger: Ancient Shadow (2005)
• Frogger: Helmet Chaos (2005)
• Frogger Puzzle (2005)
• Frogger's 25 Anniversary (Xbox 360) (2006)
• Frogger 25th, Frogger Evolution (mobile game) (2006)^[3]
• My Frogger Toy Trials (Nintendo DS) (2006)
• Frogger Launch (2007)
• Frogger 2 (Xbox 360) (2008), the third game to call itself "Frogger 2", for Xbox Live Arcade
• Frogger Returns (Wii/PlayStation 3) (2009)^[4]
• Frogger Inferno (iOS) (2010)
• Frogger 3D (Nintendo 3DS) (2011)
• Frogger Decades (iOS) (2011)
• Frogger Free (iOS) (2011)

In many of the recent games (starting with Frogger: The Great Quest), Frogger is shown as bipedal, wearing a shirt with a crossed-out truck.

In popular culture

In film and television

• 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. Saturday Supercade has never been officially released on VHS or DVD.^{[citation needed]}
• In 1995, a VR Troopers episode featured a usurping frog monster called "Amphibidor" that hated being called "Frogger" by Ryan, because he does not "hop across roads or rivers to avoid cars and alligators just to get home".
• In 1998, the game was featured in the Seinfeld episode "The Frogger".^[5] Jerry and George visit a soon-to-be-closed restaurant they frequented as teenagers and discover the Frogger machine still in place, with George's decades-old high score still recorded. He buys the machine and tries to get it home without letting it lose power, which would erase the score with his initials "GLC" (in reality, Frogger does not actually let players enter their initials). After rigging the machine up with a battery, his attempt to navigate it across a busy New York street is a direct parody of the game (which uses the same sound effects and is shown from a top down view) and ends with the machine being smashed. George's score was 860,630 points, a score once thought to be unachievable on an actual Frogger arcade machine, not to mention that the real game has only a 5 digit score counter.
• 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.^[6]

In music

• In 1982, Buckner & Garcia recorded a song called "Froggy's Lament", using sound effects from the game, and released it on the album Pac-Man Fever. The song begins:

Froggy takes one step at a time
The way that he moves has no reason or rhyme
He hops and jumps, dodges and ducks
Cars and buses, vans and trucks.

• Bad Religion has also recorded a song called "Frogger" about the traffic in Los Angeles, in which the singer claims to be "playing Frogger with my life".
• Lagwagon's compilation titled "Let's Talk About Leftovers" featured the song from the game played on bass on loop at the end of the CD.
• Paul and Storm wrote and performed a comedic song called Frogger! The Frogger Musical.
• The line "Frogger bass" appears in Deee-lite's song "'Say Ahhh...'".

Other

• In 2006, a group in Austin, Texas used a modified Roomba dressed as Frogger to play a real-life version of the game. Although the group expected the Bluetooth controlled machine to be crushed on its first time across, the modified Roomba was able to get across the street 10 times (40 lanes) and survive for 15 minutes before it was "killed" by an SUV.^[7]
• On December 27, 2010, a 23-year old male in Clemson, South Carolina decided to play a real-life version of Frogger in which he attempted to jump across highway traffic. He was hit by an SUV and went to the hospital in critical condition.^[8]
• Frogger is also the name given to a transposon ("jumping gene") family in the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster.^[9]
• On November 5, 2011, a live-action tribute to Frogger called Field Frogger was played at the Come Out and Play Festival in San Francisco.^[10]

Highest score

On December 22, 2009, Pat Laffaye of Westport, Connecticut, USA, scored a Frogger world record high score of 896,980 points.^[11] No other Frogger gamer has been verified as having beaten the fictional George Costanza Seinfeld score of 860,630 points.^[12][13]

See also

• Frogs (1978), an earlier frog game published by Sega-Gremlin

References

External links

• Frogger at the Killer List of Videogames
• Frogger at MobyGames
• Frogger guide at StrategyWiki
• Frogger Series at the Open Directory Project
• Comparison of Sierra Frogger home computer releases