Frogger

Frogger

Frogger is exactly what it has always been: a very-low-input game about patience and exactitude. Digital Eclipse, the company largely responsible for these no-effort ports onto XBox Live's Arcade, basically did a sprite-swap, and despite looking a thousand times better than its original blocky state, they actually managed to make it worse.

The gameplay is the same: You're a frog. A frog who can't swim, but still a frog. And you're on a highway median. You need to cross a highway that is extraordinarily poorly designed, with traffic flow reversed from lane to lane, and vehicles that are clearly not street-legal (like bulldozers and salt-flat racers) zipping along. Then, turtles attempting to qualify for a synchronized swimming team will assist you in getting from log to log, and if you play your cards right, you'll end up at home with a little lady frog to make you some hot cocoa.

Where Digital Eclipse goes wrong is in offering an upgraded graphics option. While it's nice to have more detailed backgrounds and pretty sprites for the various objects, high-level Frogger play is about very exacting jumps, weaving between traffic with only pixels to spare. The "upgraded graphics" add just enough blurryness, just enough questionability to the range which is "safely on the log" versus the range that qualifies as "in the water, start over froggy" that you end up having to simply turn off the upgraded mode. The most frustrating jumps relate to the Frog Homes, which now have rounded-off edges that make judging the center much more difficult.

Overall, the game is a fun diversion, and while depth was never the strong point of early-80s arcade classics, you and George Constanza would both be well-served in giving Frogger a shot in this millenium, if only to piss off Jeff Minter.

As a side note, this will be the last dailyreview article until the last week of the year, as I am going on holiday to play a whole bunch of games and refresh my opinions on a few before posting reviews.

Graphics: Upgraded graphics are prettier (at least SNES quality), but destroy high-level play. 2.
Sound: Chiptunes and public-domain piano licks were weak 20 years ago. 1.
Controls: The left stick stands in amenably for an arcade joystick. 3.
Tilt: Disposable and cheap, just like a true arcade classic. 2.
Overall (not an average): 2.