I got the pic from Matt Cooley's Classic Video Games.
What kind of game is this?
Don't tell me you don't now what kind of game FROGGER is.
You really need to know?
Well if you are going to be that serious about it, I will try to explain it to you.
YOU, the player, resemble a frog (
) (thats probably one of the reasons why it's called
FROGGER in the first place).
You start off at the bottom of the screen and try to reach the top of the screen.
At the top there are some houses, or what ever you want to call them. They are the
places you've got to reach. The way to the top is barred with some obstacles, moving
obstacles. The screen can be devided into two sections, the bottom half and the top half.
(well not exactly halves, but it would be stupid to say first section is 1/10, the
second 4/10, the third again 1/10 ... and so on)
You start off at the border of a heavily traffic'ed freeway.
There are several lanes the frog has to pass without being overrun by a car.
Usually there are 5 lanes (never seen a freeway with
5 lanes). There usually are several types of cars(
), ranging from a bike up to a
heavy trucks. You shouldn't be concerned what type of car it is or who is driving it, you are
concerned with crossing the street without beeing overrun. The freeway is really
fantastic (once you start thinking about it), 'cause the direction the traffic-participants
are heading changes every other lane! Naturally they are moving with different speed-factors,
although their speed is allways constant (who would use his breaks for a frog!?!).
Once having passed the freeway the frog may rest a bit (in the early stages of the game anyway),
there happens to be some sort of green path in between the two halves of the gamescreen
(thats what I ment... not exactly halves, because it's very difficult to have something
of one entity in between two halves of exactly that entity...).
For now the frog may catch his breath and look forward to the dangers that lie ahead.
But beware, don't rest to long, death may come to you in more than one disguise,...
Well, I didn't mention it before, so I'll do it now, you see, there is this timelimit.
If Frog is not home within a certain time he is going to die due to sickness and decay...
The game strategy reverses from this stage. Up to this point Frog had to avoid all moving
objects. From now on the only way to his home is by using certain things that move.
Now he MUST touch the moving things.
As everybody knows frogs are amphibious animals, so it's well and proper that the second part
of the game has some relation to water. As a matter of fact Frog must cross a river.
That's a tricky part, I never quite figured out why he can't just swim across to his home?
In my humble opinion (IMHO ;-)) there are just two possibilities:
)
) (allways on small log)
)
) (not diving)
) (not on opened mouth)
) (not occupied)(not moving)
Frog must reach his home, which is allocated at the top of the screen. There usually are
five homes per level. Once a home is occupied it may not be entered again (at that level).
Trying to move to a occupied home means instant death. The hardest home to reach is usually
the furthest one to the left or right (depending on the current of the river).
The river part of the screen is a little bit more sophisticated than the freeway
part. There are some bonuses that can be collected, and there are some dangers that one
wouldn't anticipate right from the start.
As I mentioned before the path between the freeway
and the river is used to catch frogs breath, but only in the early stages of the
game. At higher levels there may be a snake (or two)(
) travelling along that path. Touching the
snakes head means instant death.
The first river band is usually occupied by small logs.
Sometimes there is a female frog on one of them (female frogs, as everyone should know, are
pink ()). Touching (that means jumping on her 8^)) earnes some
bonus points.
On the second and fourth band one can most often find turtles. Turtles are quite harmless
and can be used as logs, as long as they don't start diving. Some (not all of them) have the
annoying habbit to dive to the ground of the river. If that happens while Frog is using them as
a boat, he will soon get into some deadly trouble...
The third band is most often occupied by long logs. On these there too may
be snakes (two snakes on one log is pretty tough going for a frog...).
The fifth and last band is home of small logs. Sometimes one can find small logs that look
different. After a while one may notice that these other logs have a mouths. Some
people don't call them logs, they call them aligators. Anyway they too may be used the
same way as logs, just don't you think about touching an opened aligator-mouth...
The arcade game is licenced by SEGA.
Some video console versions were published by PARKER.
MILTON BRADLEY published a boardgame named FROGGER.
LINDY published a LCD handheld game.
Someone forgotten?
Do You want to see/hear some FROGGER versions?
All (well nearly all...) graphics curtuously priveded by ME!
These people of Web Counter are watching again, they tell me, that there were allreadyMalbanvisitors at this place.