A Bit of Surprise: The Evolution of Frogger

HOW MANY BITS, MERCER? 6/8 BITS

Everyone, at least once in their life has played some form or another of the game Frogger. Whether it was in an arcade, or in your home there has been a version of this game for every single platform, pretty much. In this post, I'll be going through the history of Frogger, and documenting the year by year growth of our unsquished green friend.

Frogger was released first in 1981 by Sega as an arcade game. The original graphics left much to be desired, was operated by joy stick, and only allowed two players per game (as is usual for arcades). The premise of the game was to hop across a highway filled with trucks, cars, tractors, motorcycles, and other moving obstacles without becoming road kill. After successfully navigating the freeway, the player must guide the frog across a river ripe with alligators, snakes, and otters by hoping along the backs of turtles. In the original game there was only five levels, each progressing in difficulty.

According to Wikipedia, some of the many ways a player could die are: 

1. Running into road vehicle
2. Jumping into the river's water
3. Running into snakes, otters or into an crocodile's jaws in the river
4. Jumping into a home invaded by an crocodile
5. Staying on top of a diving turtle too long
6. Drifting off the screen by sitting on a log or turtle too long
7. Jumping into a home already occupied by a frog
8. Jumping into the side of a home or the bushes
9. Running out of time before getting a frog home

After the original Frogger game, people began porting it out for home media usage. The original was copied by numerous different companies in game cartridge and magnetic media form. Another version was not made until 1997 when Hasbro Interactive made for Windows and Playstation in 1997.

This version featured much better graphics, and an updated version of Frogger as having an orange stripe down his back. There were also many more levels rather than the original five.

Since that time Frogger has been recreated 19 times, for various different platforms, including, most recently, Frogger Returns for Wii and Playstation 3. It's been released for Nintendo DS, Mobile Phone, Playstation, Playstation 2, XBox, and many more. Below are featured screenshots from the games to show the progression of the graphics, as well as

Frogger as a character.

The Original Frogger

Frogger for Gameboy

Frogger for Playstation

Frogger for Wii