Frogger is the first installment in the Frogger series for the Playstation 1. It was developed by SCE Cambridge Studio and published by Hasbro Interactive in 1997. The game has you play as the titular character hopping through various open worlds trying to rescue multicolored baby frogs within a strict time limit. The game sold extremely well, becoming one of the highest selling PS1 games, though it received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics due to its extremely Nintendo Hard difficulty and poor design in some parts. Nonetheless, Frogger fans still generally enjoy the game for the very reason that critics dislike it, and it's currently one of the most popular games in the series.
In 1998, Frogger games were released on the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and Game Boy Color, but while these versions all share this game's cover artwork, they are more straightforward ports of the original arcade game and do not feature an equivalent to the new content created for this one. The Genesis and SNES versions are notable for being the final officially licensed games released for their respective systems in the US prior to the consoles being discontinued. This game would receive a sequel, titled Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge in the year 2000, as well as a Creator-Driven Successor in the form of 2002's Zapper, originally planned to be the third installment of this incarnation of Frogger.
These tropes are back!:
- The Artifact: The game retains a pretty surprising amount of aspects from the original arcade game that many (particularly critics) argued didn't have a solid place in a home console game. For example, the Timed Mission aspect remains despite how large some of the levels are and you still are sent back to the start every time you rescue a baby frog with no checkpoints. The sequel knocked out a lot of these aspects.
- Bee Afraid: Honey Bee Hollow (single-player) and Swarming Frogs (multiplayer).
- Blackout Basement: Dark Dark Cavern, which requires you to eat several fireflies to be able to see farther.
- Bragging Rights Reward: Technically in order to finish the game, all you need to do is find the golden frogs in every zone and finish the last level. As such, any levels at and past where the golden frogs reside in each zone are, in all technicality, completely meaningless. For that reason, finishing all the levels counts as this.
- Cut and Paste Environments: Alongside the five retro levels, there are several stages that are just more difficult versions of preceding levels. A common element of these is that obstacles move much faster.
- Spinning Lillies is a rehash of Lily Islands, except beyond some altered level geometry and taking place as dusk, several extra hazards (a mower and several bulldogs) were added and, as the name implies, every lily pad spins. The area the red frog rested was raised, requiring the player to ride up to it with the assistance of two birds.
- Bow Wow Revenge is a recycled version of Bow Wow Falls, though it did add a new area in the bottom left corner of the map.
- Loonier Balloons is, quite obviously, a different version of Looney Balloons. Very little of it was changed but many of the paths leading to the frogs need to be taken differently.
- Boom Boom Barrel, a remix of Bang Bang Barrel. Beyond different lighting and different insects to collect, little has changed.
- Crumbled Point is a reused Cactus Point. The obstacle increase is turned up to eleven for this re-tread, though.
- The dreaded Big Boulder Alley, which takes Boulder Alley and ups the ante to the extreme. In addition to increasing the already annoying amount of obstacles, they even added enemies that weren't in Boulder Alley, and moved two of the baby frog locations to a widely expanded lower layer.
- Excuse Plot: Pretty much. The "plot" given in the manual makes very little sense, summing up as "Frogger died a long time ago and while he was gone, a bunch of baby frogs went missing. Now he's alive again and has to save them." But it still doesn't explain the more nonsensical elements of the game, such as how they ended up in the sewers and in the clouds.
- Giant Spider: The Cave Zone levels have a few, none more triumphant than in Webs Cavern.
- Golden Ending: No pun intended; getting all eight golden frogs allows you to see the game's ending upon finishing Tropical Trouble. If you miss any along the way, you simply only get to see the credits and nothing else.
- Grimy Water: In the sewer zone, and probably the only place where Frogger's Super Drowning Skills are actually justified, since sewage actually would kill most living things.
- Guide Dang It!:
- The game gives almost no indication that you're able to superhop on a few of the hedges in Mower Mania. The only hint that you can is that a few of the hedges are flat and recessed on the top, but if you don't have a keen eye for detail, it's incredibly easy to overlook.
- It is very easy to overlook the fact that one of the alligators that makes up the alligator bridge in Big Boulder Alley never goes under the water, even though he otherwise looks exactly the same as all the rest. That simple fact makes going across the bridge infinitely easier, though still not a cakewalk.
- Instant-Win Condition: It doesn't matter what else is happening, once Frogger reaches a baby frog, that's victory (or 1/5 of it, anyway). Bees and hawks will halt their chase mid-flight and give up for no visible reason, because they can't do anything until Frogger respawns to go after the next baby.
- Living MacGuffin: The golden frogs. Getting one of them unlocks a zone, and getting all of them lets you see the game's ending.
- Losing Horns: A solo trombone jingle plays when you get game over. Expect to hear it a lot.
- MacGuffin-Person Reveal: When you finish Tropical Trouble, the golden frogs are revealed to be this. If you missed any along the way, you don't get to see the ending.
- The Maze:
- Webs Cavern includes a few mazes of webs to navigate through in order to rescue the baby frogs. Made interesting by the fact that you are in a very dark cave that progressively gets darker the more time you spend without eating fireflies.
- Lava Crush may count as well, as getting the green frog requires you to press certain switches in the correct order, and sometimes with careful timing.
- Meaningless Lives: You only have three lives (or five, in the PC port) so Game Overs can and do happen, but all that happens is you get spit back to the main menu, where you can restart the level you just died on. Might as well have just had infinite lives, since navigating through the menus to pick up where you left off is annoying, especially if it happens repeatedly. And it often does on the harder levels.
- Misbegotten Multiplayer Mode: In a case of
Executive Meddling, Hasbro Interactive insisted the game needed to have a multiplayer mode, leading to one that feels quite tacked on as a result. The levels are quite difficult if you aren't familiar with the game mechanics, and one level in particular (Swarming Frogs) is going to be a Curb-Stomp Battle if one of the players is already familiar with the game from single player mode. In one particularly bad case, Jungle Rumble has a single flag that is much harder to reach than the others, which can lead to matches that drag on forever due to everyone fighting for the one flag if all the others get taken first. - Poison Mushroom: There are a couple of red bugs around some stages which, if you eat them, subtract from the time limit. Another type of bug exists to do nothing but subtract from your current score.
- Power-Up Letdown: Super Tongue is an almost completely pointless addition. Auto-Hop and Quick Jump both have their uses (despite their rarity), but Super Tongue just gives you a bit more reach on catching flies...which would be great, if it weren't for the fact that this is very seldom actually helpful. There's exactly one place in the entire game's set of 33 levels where you actually need it — there's a 1-up just barely out of reach on Lily Islands. Otherwise though, its functionality goes almost completely unused.
- Shout-Out: The last level in the Sewer Zone is called Reservoir Frogs.
- Sprite/Polygon Mix: The flies are all sprites in this game, unlike most of the game, which is rendered using 3D models.
- Stealth Pun: The level Time Flies. At first it just seems like a flying pun because the majority of the level is spent riding on a flock of ducks, but it's actually more or less a pun on all the time-increasing flies scattered across the level.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: Frogger Goes Skiing, where you, well, go skiing.
- Video Game 3D Leap: The first 3D game in the Frogger series, though the gameplay is mostly the same, with some alterations such as the more open stage design. Most later games would take this game's design as a template, with the linearity varying between games.
