Saturday, April 6, 2024

A to Z Challenge: Frogger

 Frogger was one of those games that became a hit early on with arcades and the Atari 2600.  And like a lot of games then, it had a silly concept:  you have to guide a frog across a road and then across a swamp to froggy heaven or whatever.  If you did it like 5 times or something you got to the next level.

Of course each level got more difficult with more lanes of traffic, faster cars, snakes, alligators, logs going really fast, and so on.  With the logs, some you could wrap around the screen but others wouldn't, so you'd have to jump or get dumped into the water.  Which for some reason kills the amphibious frog.  But you did get to mate with a white frog sometimes, so there's that.  

My family had Frogger for the 2600 so I played it a bit.  I don't remember how far I got but I don't think it was really one with an ending.  The game was of course memorialized in an episode of Seinfeld where George buys an arcade version of it to try to preserve his high score, but of course fails at doing so.  There was a brilliant bit where you watch overhead as he basically reenacts the game while pushing the cabinet only to get stuck at the curb--something that isn't really a problem in the game itself.

You can probably get versions of Frogger for your phone or in various Atari or maybe even NES revivals and knockoffs.

Ribbit!

4 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

I played it a couple times in the arcade, but I don't think we had the Atari version. I think Activision had a knock off version with a chicken crossing the road.

Christopher Dilloway said...

I know there have been newer versions of the game made, but fancy graphics and updated gameplay couldn't equal the original classic. Kids these days don't understand that games didn't used to have endings and there weren't save points....you played until either you quit or the machine broke down...now get off my lawn you darn kids! lol Many hours of childhood spent jumping that silly little frog

Timothy S. Brannan said...

I enjoyed this game, but never was very good at it.

Cindy said...

I played this years ago a few times, but never really liked it. I didn't see the point of it.

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