Frogger

1001 Video Games

The Arcade version of Frogger appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cartoon

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. As of 2008, Saturday Supercade has never been officially released on VHS or DVD.

Graphics

Frogger supports a tweaked CGA graphics mode which is able to create more than 4 colors on the screen by switching color palettes each time the display reaches a particular scan line. This trick only seems to work on true CGA cards, including the Tandy 1000. The game uses this technique to produce blue water and a black road. (Several alternate options are also included, such as a bright green road and black water, though I'm not sure why you'd want to use some of these available combinations.)

This technique has appeared in a few other games, including Jungle Hunt, California Games, and The Games: Summer Edition.

Inaccuracies

In Frogger, if you fall into the water, you die. This makes no sense at all in the real world: Frogs are amphibious creatures, at home in the water as much as on land.

Music

The first stage's background music on most platforms is the opening song to Nippon Animation's 1977 anime series Araiguma Rascal.

References to the game

• In episode #174 of Seinfeld (The Frogger), George discovers that his high score still remains on the Frogger machine in a pizza place he and Jerry used to go to in high school. In an attempt to rescue the machine and his high score, the camera shows George trying to cross a car-infested street from the same perspective as the game, complete with music.
• Frogger was popular enough to have a song inspired by it on the full-length Pac-Man Fever album - Froggy's Lament.
• 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.
• Robot Chicken parodied Frogger once: an enhanced version of Frogger crosses the road and a truck crashes into a car and explodes while people are yelling at each other. He then tells the other frogs that "it's time to cross the street".
• In season 12's last episode of Fifth Gear, Johnny Smith's Frogger self contained unit is put into an armored vehicle, to test its construction.

Release

The Super Nintendo version was the last game released for the system in America. Excluding 2006's Beggar Prince, it was also the last American game released on the Genesis.

Starpath Supercharger

In 1983, Starpath Corporation released the 3rd game designed for them by Stephen H. Landrum entitled THE OFFICIAL FROGGER for the Atari 2600 Video Computer System (VCS) and licensed to them by Sega Enterprises, Inc. The reason Starpath was able to create their version of the Atari 2600 port was that although Parker Brothers owned the cartridge rights, they did not own the magnetic media rights, opening the door for Starpath.

The game is one of a few cassette based games (living up to the term “tape”) ever released for the Starpath Supercharger. Unlike the first two games Landrum designed for Starpath, this one does not contain a secret way to see the designer’s initials.

Title

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.

Version differences

The Xbox 360 version closely resembles the original game, but it has new artwork, modernized sound and music, new bonuses, and new play modes (split screen head-to-head and co-op).

Awards

• Retro Gamer
  • Issue #46 - #6 in the “Top 25 Atari 2600” Games poll

Information also contributed by Dracula Marth, Guy Chapman, Jeanne, LepricahnsGold, Nélio, NewRisingSun, PCGamer77, Sciere, Servo and FatherJack