In Praise of Frogger

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scotland
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In Praise of Frogger

Postby scotland » July 29th, 2018, 12:43 pm

Had houseguests, and we ended up playing a good amount of Frogger.

Its all ages fun, and ramps up in difficulty nicely. It non-violent (except to the Frog) and has that cross gender appeal of Pac Man

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VideoGameCritic
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Re: In Praise of Frogger

Postby VideoGameCritic » July 29th, 2018, 1:02 pm

When I was a kid my parents had another couple over the house one night and were surprised that the woman was really excited about my Atari 2600 video game collection (set up in family room). I wasn't there, but apparently they played a lot of games with Frogger being the most popular.

It's funny, my parents never considered that "grown ups" might enjoy playing video games. I guess that was the mindset in the 80's.

But yeah Frogger is such a simple, well-executed concept it's brilliant.

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scotland
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Re: In Praise of Frogger

Postby scotland » July 29th, 2018, 5:44 pm

Funny that Activision's David Crane's Freeway is much the same, and developed around the same time.

That may be a reason why Frogger was ported everywhere - there was no real way to stop a clone with Freeway out there saying "What - I'm not copying Frogger, see, I'm using a chicken/kangaroo/guy on a pogo stick"

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Re: In Praise of Frogger

Postby VideoGameCritic » July 29th, 2018, 6:26 pm

Frogger was a lot more creative than Freeway, with basically two different stages on one screen.
Freeway does offer head-to-head play though.

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scotland
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Re: In Praise of Frogger

Postby scotland » July 29th, 2018, 7:16 pm

I think Frogger is actually using twin Z80s in the arcade - possibly one for the road and one for the river, but I'm not sure on that.

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pacman000
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Re: In Praise of Frogger

Postby pacman000 » July 31st, 2018, 1:40 pm

Wikipedia says the arcade version used two Z80s, 1 as the CPU, 1 as a sound chip.

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scotland
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Re: In Praise of Frogger

Postby scotland » May 14th, 2020, 7:55 pm

Frogger is still a hit in my house, and I may try several versions across the many platforms I have.

Tonight I booted up Frogger on the Odyssey 2

I only have this because of the multicart. It was my first multicart and well worth the price of admission.

First, the Odyssey 2 Frogger is one of the best looking games on the system. Its nice to see so many objects fluidly in motion, even if they did have to fall back on the hardware circles. Nice little skull graphic when you die too.

As noted in Dave's review, getting to that far left spot is a leapin' nightmare. Its also flipped the final locations from little bits of pond to the green land dividers. Not a big deal, and they just remove those sections as you use them. Even the first level is a rather intense experience.

I wonder how many versions of Frogger and Frogger clones there are out there? Is there a name for dodging games like Freeway and Frogger and now Crossy Road in the arcades.


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