The arcade as of late have gotten rid of the Frogger we know and love and has added a new version of the game that is token winning based. The new Frogger is not about strategy or skill it’s about dumb luck. This article will educate you and then bring your world crashing down in an instant. Please allow this writer’s frustration be your elation.
Frogger is a game that was developed by Konami. Konami was known for such great games as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the Arcade Game, Batman the Arcade Game, and the Metal Gear series. They also fathered the most legendary code in gaming history, simply referred as, the Konami Code. When you pressed UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A, START something magical happened in those games. Extra-life, more money, or invincibility could easily be in your reach. They had Sega publish the game in 1981 and the people received it with rave reviews and many quarters.
The object of the game was to get all your frogs across the street and river and into their nice and soggy marsh. There are perils however: traffic on a busy highway, alligators, and the inability to swim gets in the way of him making it home. Yes, Frogger and kin can’t swim. Most people don’t question it but this column writer is. The moment we get a response from Konami about why a frog can’t swim we will get back to you post haste. The game took skill and to get the spot in the top left corner took a lot of planning to achieve. If you have played the game you would know the difficulty. The game took real skill to play and win. Although you never really beaten a real arcade game the game as always had 255 levels.
Now the new version of Frogger is a gorgeous game. The game touts lovely HD graphics that pops out of the screen. The sprites for the game are fun and colorful to look at. This game was definitely created just for kids. Calling it a game is a bit of an overstatement though. The object of the game is still to make it to the other side of the river but that is not how you win the game. The object of the game is to eat bugs meet your girlfriend, some pink frog, and make it across. Instead of crossing a busy highway you are crossing traffic full of smiling bugs. They are brave souls you must know. They smiled facing death as Frogger eats them and they disappear. Sadly the trend of Frogger not being able to swim still continues in this happy patch of swampland. Here’s where the problem comes in. The controls are just pressing a big, green, flashing, frog-shaped button when you are ready for Frogger to trek across the screen. Then you watch the malarkey as it happens.
Depending on your timing you can catch a couple of bugs. You giggle at their smiling as they are consumed by the hungry amphibian. Then you get to the river, or maybe it’s a stream. It is a lot smaller. You begin to notice a certain trend to the logs and turtles that floats up and down the stream. They intentionally flow in a way that sets you up for failure. Frogger hops on the left side of the screen and the first set of logs flow from left to right. The appearance and length of the logs or turtles are fairly random and ninety percent of the time you are going to miss. For a person who played the original Frogger and the myriad of remakes of the game it hard to respect what they did to a once glorious title.
Then again…at least you get to win points for prizes.
You can play this game at GameTime or Dave and Buster’s in Miami, FL.
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