Tendo City

In the late '90s to early '00s, Hasbro and a few other companies including Activision made some new titles in classic first and second-gen game series like Pong, Centipede, and Frogger. Opinions on these games in restrospect seem to often be mediocre, but I got and always liked the Centipede remake from Hasbro, and have liked most of their other ones I've played too, including Frogger 2 and Q*Bert. Activision's Space Invaders is fun, though I haven't played Asteroids. The only one I disliked really was Frogger, the first one, but I haven't played too much of it.

Anyway, though reviews for the first Frogger remake (released on PC and PSX in about 1997) weren't great, it clearly sold well, because it inspired the rest of the line. Several years later, Hasbro made a sequel to the game, Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge. It was released on PC, Playstation, and Dreamcast. A handheld title for the GBC, called simply Frogger 2, was also made (Frogger 1 for GB and GBC is a port of the arcade original, not a new title, but the second one is entirely new.). These games both released in 2000. I don't remember hearing a lot about the games, though I think they got okay reviews. However, when I got Frogger 2 for Dreamcast a year or so ago (maybe a bit more, not certain), my expectations weren't especially high; sure, I'd liked some of Hasbro's remakes, but I remember the poor reviews of their Frogger 1... so, well, let's just say that the game far exceeded my expectations. It has its issues, certainly, but is a pretty good game overall.

(Oh, before I begin, the same team that made Swampy's Revenge made another similar title a few years later, sans the Frogger license -- Zapper: One Wicked Cricket. There are two versions, one for GC/PS2/XBox and the other for GBA. Both versions are good as well.)

I will address each of the two Hasbro Frogger 2 games separately, because apart from the basics of gameplay, they are entirely different games, with different settings, some differences in plot and game design, and more.


Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge (PC/PS1/DC) (played on DC)
---



Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge is, like the new Frogger game before it, a 3d platform/action game with Frogger-inspired gameplay. This game was hugely improved over the first one. I find it interesting how much it feels like the classic original title -- while it is a new game, they clearly were working from that early '80s playbook as well. It doesn't change as much as people would think from the original formula, and that is part of why it's such a good, and challenging, game.

Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge is, as the title suggests, a sequel to the first game. Wanting revenge from his defeat, the evil croc Swampy has kidnapped numerous baby frogs! Yeah, it's a pretty basic plot, but it's good enough I guess, and some of the CG cutscenes are amusing. :) In story mode, Frogger and the pink girl frog Lilly Frog team up to rescue the babies from Swampy. You play as each in certain levels,m though functionally they are the same. In addition to the main two though, there are five other characters playable in the other modes. Some of them must be unlocked.

On that note, the most important mode is of course the main Story mode, but there are several other modes of play. First there's the expected single stage mode, where you can replay any level you've beaten and try to collect everything or complete the level in a faster time. This is good for going back and improving performance in levels later, after beating the game. Second there's Super Retro mode, which I will explain later. Last, there's a four player multiplayer mode.

While it uses 3d, overhead-angle graphics, the game plays traditionally -- like the original Frogger games, this game works on a grid. Pressing a direction on the d-pad will move your frog one square in the direction you press. There's no auto-movement, you need to press for each move. Also, it often allows you to walk off sides of platforms, so watch out! Don't expect everything to have walls, that would make things too easy. The camera is far enough back that you can get a good view and see all of the potential dangers around you; in the first game the camera was far too close. In addition, you usually can't kill enemies, either; you do far more avoiding threats than defeating enemies. This is key to the Frogger feel, if you could just kill the monsters at will it wouldn't be as tense, or as much like classic Frogger. There is a powerup that lets you destroy some, but still, there is far more avoiding than destroying in this game. The characters can take a couple of hits, but not many, and of course instant-death hazards are everywhere.



In addition to standard movement (that is, jumping to the tiles around you with the d-pad), Frogger and the other characters also can jump upwards up to a higher platform in front of them with A, jump forward over two tiles in the direction you are facing by double tapping A (DC controls), use a Power Croak which lets you identify if any babies are nearby, and use your Bug-Seeking Tongue which lets you grab bugs, which will each refill your health one. There are several powerups as well, including extra lives and a quick-hop powerup which allows you to move by just holding down directions on the dpad, as well as a few others.

In each level, your primary goal is to get to the end, but along the way you should find the five kidnapped baby frogs. You'll need them if you want to really complete the stage. Some are kind of hidden, so explore around and find them. There are also 25 gems to find in each level. Some are well hidden, as you'd expect. There are 16 levels in story mode. More might be nice, but sixteen felt like enough to me, considering the challenge and replay value -- collecting everything and getting a good time add plenty of replay for anyone interested. The difficulty gradually increases as expected as you go through the game. There's a nice variety of settings, and the graphics are pretty nice. Sure, this is a port and not a DC original, but the sharp, clear graphics look good and certainly far better than anything the PS1 could put on the screen. (Oh, the game is d-pad only; no analog stick support. Given the strict grid system movement though, that makes sense.) Some levels, like the Aztec pyramid-style stage, gave me a lot of trouble. Between worlds there are short CG cutscenes showing the next bit of the story. If you die in a level you restart from the last checkpoint in the stage, but if you run out of lives and get game over -- and with only five lives, this is easy to do -- you'll have to start the level over. Nice, classic design. Exploring each level, figuring out what to do at each challenge, and then getting through successfully was both fun and rewarding.



Super Retro mode stages are unlocked as you make progress through the main campaign. There are ten levels in this mode. Each one is a level played in a straight overhead perspective, original Frogger style, and your goal is to get five frogs to the five spots at the other end of the level. That is, it's a modern update of the original Frogger's gameplay. I loved these levels, and they were one of my favorite things about the game; the main game is very good as well, but these were just fantastic. The levels are set in settings from the main game, but the stage designs get nasty, and some of these levels are pretty hard to just finish, much less finish with a best time. So many moving platforms to move between, so few safe spots... Fun stuff. Frustrating when you're losing, certainly, but fun. :)

As for the multiplayer, I haven't played it myself, but there are three multiplayer games for up to four players on the DC, or on PSX as well with a multitap. One is a race mode with two specially designed courses -- try to be the first player to the end. Snake mode is a cross between the classic game Snake and Tron --you create blocks behind you as you move, can't stop, and try to get the other players to crash into your trails. Your trail gets longer as you grab more coins. There are three stages. Last is Time Trial mode. Played on three stages from Super Retro mode, there are five babies in the stage and the players try to get as many as they can. The player with the most wins.

Overall, Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge is a good game. The graphics, audio, and story are decent enough to do, but it's the gameplay that carries it. The simple, oldschool style is pretty fun.


Frogger 2 (Game Boy Color)
---



I got this game last year, after playing through the Dreamcast title above. I found a copy and, because the console title was good, though t the handheld one might be worth checking out as well. Well, simply, it was. Frogger 2 is a great, addictive, and challenging game that I loved. It hooked me and kept me coming back until I finished it, and even though it might not take as long to finish thanks to the small number of screens in each level, I'd probably rank it just as high as the DC game overall. It was that good.

First, I want to say thank you to Hasbro for putting a battery in this title. So many second-tier handheld ports that generation had password-only saving, but Hasbro paid out the extra cash for a battery, and it really makes a difference -- you won't need passwords, and it will save your best times and whether you've gotten all the stuff in each level as well.

Frogger 2 (there is no subtitle on the GBC) is a fun, but challenging, game. In the game, you control Frogger or Lily Frog in their quest to rescue all of the kidnapped baby frogs. There's no main villain in this version, only babies to rescue at the end of each world, and they aren't really collectables here; instead, gems are. Also, the two frogs aren't just identical, they swap out on the pause menu -- you can change from green to pink by pausing and then hitting select to switch. Cutscenes are minimized here; there are a few static-screen images, and text boxes when you talk to the helper frog who gives you hints along the way (oh, do read them, they can be amusing) and at the beginning and end of the game, but this is a game you play more for the journey than for a great ending. Of course, as it's on 8-bit hardware, it fits in quite nicely in that regard. The graphics and sound are okay, but nothing special. It looks a lot like a NES game. It looks good enough, and the style works. Each world has a different theme as well.

The game plays largely vertically. Each stage's playfield is about two screens wide by five or so screens high. There are 32 stages in the game; that may be twice as many levels as the console game, but with how many fewer screens each one is made up of, it's certainly the smaller title. Don't make the mistake of thinking that smaller is lesser, though. While Swampy's Revenge is a quality classic remake, GBC Frogger 2 is even more traditional. In standard levels, the goal is to reach the exit at the top of the stage. In stages where you rescue a baby frog, though, you will have to go back to the beginning of the stage after collecting it, instead of the stage ending at the top. These reverse sections definitely are interesting. Also, each stage has 16 gems in it to collect. The game records if you've gotten all 16 in each stage in the stage select screen ("play single level"), so you can go back after you beat levels to get gems you may have missed. The main game rewards you for getting all the gems in a stage by refilling your time after you get the last one. The later worlds, like the ice world or the final stage, are challenging and tricky. I died many times before figuring them out. That certainly made it more rewarding once I did, though! This game's fun hard -- it was challenging enough to be frustrating, but not so much so that I wanted to give up for good or make victory near-impossible. The game kept things fun to the end, and the difficulty level is just right.

Several things make this game challenging, despite the short stages. First, there's no health bar like on the console version; instead, one hit kills you and sends you back to the last checkpoint. The last set of levels don't have any checkpoints, so dying sends you back to the beginning of the level for those. Second, it is impossible to attack the enemies in any way; you will simply need to avoid them. They all follow specific patterns, but still, it's easy to slip up and get killed. Third, you have a time limit. I rarely ran out of time, but you do need to pay some attention to it or you might die. And last, deadly hazards and pits abound everywhere, and you will often need perfect precision to not die; one instant too late and you'll fall into the pit instead of making the jump onto that next mine-car in the last area. And with death awaiting you if the car you're on goes off screen, you'd better hurry, and have planned your moves ahead by watching the pattern. Also, this game does not save after every level. Instead, you'll need to beat three or four levels before your progress is saved. This definitely increases the difficulty, as I often found myself playing the same levels over and over because I was dying at a harder stage farther on. I didn't really mind, though; while limited saving like this is often annoying, in this case I think it works just fine. It increases the difficulty nicely and provides for a solid challenge, but it's not impossible; you can still win, you just need to play better next time. There are precious extra lives scattered around the levels, though, so look for them.



And that really is what this game is about -- pattern recognition and split-second timing. Sure, it starts out easy-ish, but it gets much harder later on. Once you've beaten the main game -- which I felt went by too quickly, probably because of how much I was enjoying it -- you can go back and try to get all the crystals in each level, or try for the best times too. You can also try to beat levels without dying. The game keeps track of these things on the stage select screen as well, with a gem for stages you got all the gems in, a trophy for ones you got a best time in, and a gold-colored gem or trophy for ones you beat without dying. You don't need to do all of these things at once, fortunately, so you can upgrade the trophy in each stage through doing one objective each time. Those times would be nearly impossible to get if you were trying to get all the gems anyway, so that's nice. It is kind of too bad that the original Frogger wasn't included, but of course, that did have its own GB/C release, so it's understandable. It is too bad that there's no mode where you have to get five frogs across a stage to goals, though; I know it's already retro-styled, but where's the equivalent of Super Retro mode? :)

Overall, This game impressed me. It's simple and straightforward -- collect the gems, get to the goal, avoid the hazards along the way, and it works very well. Anyone who likes Frogger games should absolutely play this. It's clearly much lower budget than the major-console title, with average graphics and a mediocre ending, but the great level designs and good gameplay carry it and make it a good, fun challenge that I really enjoyed playing. This is not a well known game, and it got some mixed reviews, but if you like Frogger at all, I think that it'd be hard not to like this. The only real issue is that you'll want even more stages to find your way through. :) Go back and try to collect all the gold trophies instead... that'll probably take a decent while.


So yeah, both of these games are pretty fun, challenging arcade-style platform/action games. Maybe check them out. :) They are a bit on the short side, challenge aside, but I at least found them fun enough while they lasted to be well worth the play, and there is at least some replay value to try to improve your runs.

Oh... and lastly, yes, it is pretty bizarre that Frogger is a frog who can't swim. :)