The premise behind [i]Frogger[/i] is a classic one, not to mention a simple one. Avoid being turned into roadkill and hop across turtles, logs and crocodiles to get all of your frogs to safety. This simple concept turned [i]Frogger[/i] into one of the classic arcade titles of the 1980s, and now with the aid of Xbox Live Arcade, you can experience the thrills of playing chicken with semi-trucks on the comfort of an Xbox 360 near you. Although other Live Arcade titles offer a bit more substance, at 400 Microsoft Points, [i]Frogger[/i] is a decent e-purchase.
[i]Frogger[/i] is, again, a simple game. The goal is to hop across the nearby highway and avoid the hazards of the water in order to get your frogs home safe. After getting five frogs to safety, you proceed to the next level, which not only ups the difficulty but adds new hazards such as snakes, weird frog-eating otter things, as well as speeding motorists. You’ve officially beat the game when you reach level five, although you can continue playing to increase your score on the Xbox Live leaderboards. For the most part, there has been little to no change in [i]Frogger[/i]’s classic game play.
The biggest change is that Konami chose to update the look of the series for more modern tastes, like many other classic Live Arcade games before it, although they did include the option to change the look to the classic arcade version. I will admit that I’m not entirely familiar with the music from the original arcade version, but the Live version plays a combination of nursery rhymes, one of which I identified as Yankee Doodle. Needless to say, I much prefer the classic arcade version (available through the options menu) if not only for that fact that the incessant music is less present.
Aside from the single player option, [i]Frogger[/i] also supports two players on a single screen and online cooperative play over Xbox Live, which adds a little bit more life after exhausting the single player mode. There are also the standard online scoreboards, although for some reason they seemed a little less prevalent than in other games. Other Arcade titles have some pretty hefty achievement requirements (I’m talking to you Robotron 2084), but [i]Frogger[/i]’s are fairly basic and easy to obtain. In fact, I would argue that a good number of the achievements could be obtained within the first and second levels.
So in the end, [i]Frogger[/i] lives up to its classic arcade roots. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to pack as good a punch as other Arcade titles, even with the addition of cooperative play, possibly because the achievements aren’t that big of a challenge and once they’re done, you might lose interest in the game. Still, 400 points (5.99 USD) isn’t breaking the bank, and whether you played [i]Frogger[/i] during the golden days of the arcade, that remake that Hasbro did back in the 90s when they went retro crazy, or have just never played it, [i]Frogger[/i] for Xbox Live Arcade will provide some good classic fun.
