My first Frogger title, which made the "He's Back!" tagline confusing to parse as a kid. I guess I knew Frogger was an arcade game through MAME, but there's sort of an odd effect when you're introduced to both the original version of a thing and a revival of that same thing around the same time. I for sure had no idea what "Retro" meant (as in the block of Retro Levels), nor how to parse it. It was just a cool-sounding word that I would later conflate with Jimmy Neutron's Retroville, again not "getting" the intent of its usage

This game is ridiculously unfriendly for series newcomers. I don't know how common Nitro Rad's takeaway, that this game is an actively miserable experience to grind out, is among people playing the game new these days. It was far and away the hardest (non-arcade) game I had access to as a really little kid, so I definitely spent a long time grinding it out. Maybe it was because I was really little, so everything was impressionable, or maybe it was because it was one of the few non-licensed games I had, because I definitely remember this being an early favorite. It's a great game for little victories. If you're not good enough to clear a world, focus on clearing a level. If you're not good enough to clear a level, focus on tracking down where the Baby Frogs are, and chart a path to each one. "Scorching Switches" is super intimidating at first, but as you memorize the level's layout, it becomes a lot more manageable. Plus those lives really only matter in the context of each individual level; don't worry overmuch about bringing ample lives into the next level.

I will fully concede that "Uncanny Crusher" and both versions of "Boulder Alley" are kinda BS. The game is usually pretty decent with how it handles its ice/slime mechanics, but mashing that together with the crushers in "Uncanny Crusher" is waaaaaay too stressful. Most of "Boulder Alley"/"Big Boulder Alley" are okay, but it's that stretch at the beginning with the giant ticks that stinks, mostly because it takes forever and you have to recalibrate yourself to that precise tedium each time.

On the flip side, I don't really mind how many levels get remixed in this game. I always thought there was a nice cadence to it, where you usually get a pretty experimental level sandwiched between the first run and remix levels. "Time Flies" has always been a favorite for how unique a premise that is. Very much a resource management level, something Frogger isn't usually worried about.

I don't love the Golden Frog system. Basically, each world had a Golden Frog hidden in one of its levels; this Golden Frog will unlock the next world and contribute to the good ending. It's a decent idea, but since the Golden Frogs are hidden in arbitrary levels, you don't need to experience the full game to get the best ending. It kinda sucks that, for example, the Golden Frog of the Mechanical Zone is hidden in "Scorching Switches" when "Platform Madness" and "Lava Crush" are far more interesting levels. If you're just cutting a swath straight to the endgame (as I did this last playthrough), you don't get to experience either of those. You also only ever get to experience the original version of "Tropical Trouble", the final level, once per save file, which always felt like a rip-off. The remixed version just isn't as good.

Also the PC version is bugged so it doesn't play music, so get ready for lonely melancholy Frogger action if that's the version you play.

what the hell was this??? They tried to modernize frogger and it really feels like literally none of the design choices they made here compliment one another. The main gameplay loop is to find the 5 frogs in each level and get them all without getting a game over. Collecting a frog sends you all the way back to the beginning of the level, and frogger is stuck on a time limit to find each frog as if someone strapped a ticking time bomb to our poor froggy protagonist.

Having the game be like that works in the first world, which is meant to recreate the original arcade game. The map is clear, you can see where each of the frogs are, and the time limit prevents you from stalling around too long and keeps the gameplay engaging, just like the original arcade game.

Unfortunately, the other 8 worlds take these pre-established rules, and manages to exploit each and every one of them to be as infuriating as humanly possible. Levels are large and difficult, which combined with the zoomed in camera basically makes finding the damn frogs an obstacle in itself. Levels are also very pattern and timing-oriented, yet said patterns never reset upon death and keep going, which can lead to a lot of circumstances where death is unavoidable. If a level has a particularly difficult section with more than one frog past it, the frog collection taking you back to beginning forces you to go through that section over again, hope you keep all your lives. Even playing this with the infinite lives cheat turned on barely helps with its difficulty, it just makes the game waste less of your time in the grand scheme of things. It really feels like both the level design and the rules of the game are only created with the sole purpose of making sure most levels are herculean trials of both skill and luck. I'm baffled that all the playtesters thought this was remotely balanced...

On the more positive side of things, the OST is actually pretty solid all things considered, so they have that going for them. I'm really bummed that this game ended up being the way it is because I wanted to play the other frogger games to see how they would play but now I'm gonna see this mfin frog and have war flashbacks to the hell this game has put me through. Hopefully those games can redeem this absolutely horrid start. Don't play this.

Game was awful, consisted of mostly issues. Biggest ones being: 1. Everything is cycle based in the game but most of the cycles don't line up 2. This compounds with 1 by the cycles not reseting when you die so its very hard to memorize potential patterns 3. The camera is extremely zoomed in so you can't see the movement of the cycles preventing you from making decisions 4. The additional actions prevent you from moving which makes you feel like rotating the camera isn't feasible in most levels 5. You're locked into a grid but the world is not so a lot of things feel flat out unfair 6. lives are just an annoyance especially with having to reselect the level each time

There's a pretty significant chance this was the first video game I ever played, at a whopping 2 years old. And it took me until today, twenty years later, to beat every level without cheats. I don't think I've ever finished a harder game.

Here's a hot take: more games released nowadays should have the balls to be this brutally hard. It's a leap of faith, because you have to trust that the game is engaging enough at its core to keep players pushing through even the most punishing sections. And honestly, it works here most of the time. Frogger (1981) is a fun game, and SCE Cambridge was at least smart enough to recognize that its core tile-based gameplay should stay intact even in a modern setting. Compare this to Pac-Man World, which has pretty much nothing to do with the arcade game, and gets stuck in generic 3D platformer mode as a result. The foundation is strong here, and that's how it gets away with the difficulty.

Truthfully, I don't think the game is unfair in the way it's so often accused of. It's completely unforgiving, requiring pattern recognition on a level you will never ever see in a modern AAA game, but it's rarely unfair. Be honest: would the game be nearly as memorable if it wasn't so hard? No, because then it would just become Frogger Beyond, or Temple of the Frog, or whatever other reboot that nobody talks about. It's addictive and punishing, but rewarding, and that's how I was perfectly okay throwing 15 hours of my time at it.

Having said all that, this game is wildly imperfect, as anyone who's played it for any significant amount of time could tell you. The presentation is rough, especially when compared to Swampy's Revenge, and punches well below the weight of the PS1 hardware. The emphasis on arcade-style score attacks makes zero sense here, as it's enough of a challenge just getting through the levels in one piece. And on the subject of the difficulty, I'll admit I have a very hard time believing that an entire QA team was able to beat Big Boulder Alley with just three lives.

But I did, and that was a glorious feeling, and that counts for something.

I was going to make a joke about this being the dark souls of Frogger games, but this came first so really Dark Souls is copying Frogger. It starts off with a faithful remake of the original arcade game and quickly descends to pure platform hell from there. Every single obstacle is a 1-hit kill, and if you game over you lose all progress on that level. Combine that with an extremely unforgiving time limit and incredibly precise platforming while controlling the world's slipperiest frog and that's the game's second half. Even with using the 99 life cheat some of the later levels are just brutally unfair (the sewer level where everything is covered in oil and there's crushers everywhere???). If you can beat this without cheats you automatically ascend to nirvana. Absolutely transcendental

One of the first games I ever played. Anything past the first three levels was hard af. God help you if you even managed to unlock all the worlds, let alone beat them.

I honestly yearn to know what the hell that final banana world actually looked like. It has fallen into myth and legend between me and my family.

Ribbit.