society wasn't ready for this shit in 1997

100%
9/10
B+

For some fucking reason, 2 of the earliest memories I have in my life are of picking out Gex: Enter the Gecko at Best Buy, and getting Frogger at Pamida. Why was i so fascinated with green characters? Why did I play so many crap games?

It might just be that when I was a child I developed an inhuman muscle memory for Frogger, becoming slavishly devoted to mastering it on the family Windows 98 in a way that no child should have. In time I could have spent learning piano or reading literary greats I spent mapping an entire section of my brain to Frogger.

For the amount of work I put into mastering this game I give it a 3. Is it worth it? I don't know man, I am beyond answering that question.

Frogger is likely the worst platformer I have ever had the displeasure of playing. I don't mind platformers being unfair if they arent a complete waste of time, and there's not many games that respect the player's time as little as frogger.

With a few fails in each level the game sends you back to the start of the level, the goal of each level is to collect 5 frogs and you have to keep repeating it till you can get all 5 without dying too many times. Add to that the fact that there's a timer so often you have to just jump in and make your way through trial and error cause there's barely enough time to learn how the hazards work.

Not only does the game not let you see more than a feet at a time due to the tiny field of view making you unable to see the dangers, there are certain platforms that would randomly kill you, and there's some rng involved with how the paths of the hazards will cross over with yours.

I cant tell if this design is pure malice or incompetence or mix of both, like there are turtles that would go underwater 1981 fucking 1981 frogger figured out how to show that they were about to go down.

I will say it was not all bad the jump of the frog in this game feels weighty and satisfying, I like the visuals and general presentation and if you cheat in infinite lives some of the levels can actually become fun to play.

But is that worth going through this game?
No, absolutely not! There are levels that take more than half an hour to beat while the music loops and you go insane trying over and over again only to die to random bullshit, do not play this game.

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.

A Frogger game where you’re supposed to work out your destination. That’s insane. It’s Frogger, you’re supposed to know where to go! The retro levels are snappy and fun and look good, which is the problem, the segment of the game which is just a remaster of the 1981 edition is the only part that engenders any pleasure. Trial and error in a fucking Frogger game! Ps this game is now 9 years older than the original was when this was released, and the time between OG Frogger and “He’s Back!” is the same time between the release of the PS3 and now

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.

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