YMMV / Frogger (1997)

• Awesome Music: Virtually, the entire soundtrack is surprisingly catchy. Even better, the PC version stored the soundtrack as CD-DA, making it easy to add to one's collection. Special mention goes to Cactus Point and both Retro Zone themes. Unfortunately for the PC version, it is hard to find a computer these days that will play the music.^note  This is probably because the game calls for another program to play the CD audio, which was included in most versions of Windows at the time. Its functionality was since merged into Windows Media Player, and the original program removed. Since the game's attempt to call the older program fails, the music simply doesn't play. This is a problem that plagues MANY older games that use CD-DA, including the PC ports of Rayman and Sonic CD. Aside from that, there's also the fact that said older program uses a legacy instruction that causes the CD-ROM drive to play the music over the analog line-out on the drive, which is usually hooked up to the sound card. Unfortunately, modern drives do not have an analog line-out connector on the drive, and would usually respond with an "end of disc" signal immediately to the program when sent the "play audio CD" command.
• Breather Level: There is an example of these here and there.
  • Tumbling Valley in the cactus zone. It follows Boulder Alley, but is a much smaller map where the baby frogs are a lot easier to find. The tumbleweeds can be tricky at first but their pattern pretty quickly becomes predictable, and none of the baby frogs are really that difficult to get maybe except for the one with all the crumbling platforms. The level that follows it, Crumbled Point, is much more difficult by contrast.
  • Boom Boom Barrel tries to be a more difficult Bang Bang Barrel, but it really just ends up feeling like the same level again. It doesn't really feel that fitting considering the level follows Uncanny Crusher, and the level directly after it, Reservoir Frogs, puts the game right back into Nintendo Hard territory.
• Camera Screw: The camera is usually closely zoomed in on Frogger and only lets you see a small area of the level around him, making it a lot harder to find the baby frogs and hiding moving objects until they're almost right next to you.
• Critical Dissonance: While the game wasn't necessarily trashed by critics (well, aside from IGN who gave it a pretty scathing review), it still received fairly mixed reception when it was originally released, with some critics being harsher than others. Despite this, it was still a commercial success and you'll find many people who grew up playing this game claiming they loved it, specifically because it was so Nintendo Hard in an era where such games were becoming more uncommon.
• Critic-Proof: The game sold over 6 million copies despite middling to negative reviews from critics. However, general audiences liked the game a lot more, and it's regarded as a classic of the PS1 library.
• Disappointing Last Level: Many players felt this about "Tropical Trouble," the final level. Considering the game's extreme Nintendo Hard nature, you'd expect a nigh-impossible level that tests your skill to new heights. Instead, you get a very short and basic level that only offers a merely decent challenge. To make this worse, once you complete the level once, nearly everything is removed from the level when you replay it, including roughly every hazard and all of the baby frogs. This is supposedly so you don't have to work hard to see the ending again, but wouldn't it have made more sense just to have that as a main menu option?
• Fan Nickname: Technically, game is just called Frogger; however, the presence of the "He's Back!" tag-line on the North American cover art has led many to adopt it as a subtitle to differentiate it from the original arcade game.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: The game has been criticized by many professional critics for its extremely high and sometimes downright cheap and unfair difficulty, which is why the sequel, Swampy's Revenge, toned down the difficulty considerably.
• Nausea Fuel: The level "Time Flies", of the motion-sickness type; to get to the area where the baby frogs reside you have to hop onto a group of birds who descend in a downward-spiral manner as you collect time flies along the way to extend the time, all while the camera remains fixed to the same awkward angle as the spinning gets faster and faster. Imagine doing this five times.
• Nightmare Fuel: The levels that contain all the sewage, which have several sections with large spiked walls closing in on you. Also, there were levels that included large spiders that wandered around the level, which, in turn, took place in a cave-like area surrounded by cobwebs.
• Nintendo Hard: Oy. For starters, time limits are present on every level, so you can't afford to dawdle lest you die. For another thing, unless it's another frog, a switch, or a platform, a single touch from anything else will kill you. Third, you have to find each and every frog or start a new life from the same starting point. And some of the levels are not only difficult, they're difficult and have gimmicks which will make them an utter nightmare. Uncanny Crusher, anyone?
• That One Level: In a game that has already has a reputation of being Nintendo Hard among many people, these particular levels stick out as being at the top of the frustratingly difficult list.
  • Big Boulder Alley is easily the peak of the game’s difficulty to many players. Boulder Alley already was no walk in the park, but Big Boulder Alley throws so many things at you that it would almost be harder to count which spaces won't kill you. First off, you have to cross two tedious pathways where you must painfully and slowly super hop over a line of oncoming beetles. Then there's the fact that one baby frog is well-hidden to the point where you'll probably run the clock down just looking for him. Then there's that one baby frog where five hundred vultures attack you at once. Then there's the other where you have to cross a bridge of alligators that go up and down in a completely unpredictable fashion, and sometimes they'll bite which leads to you dying anyway, and even getting down to the lower area where that frog resides is already a challenge, as Frogger must hop onto a bird that lets him safely descend down, in an area where he must dodge a series of boulders. And there's the other much more difficult path of oncoming beetles to cross. It's not so much one thing that makes this level such a nightmare, it's that it does just a little bit of everything well enough that every baby frog is difficult to get to in some way or another, leading to one of the single most frustrating levels to grace the game. The only upside is that it's not required to finish for 100% Completion.
  • Uncanny Crusher. Most of the level consists of sliding around on slimy sewage while dodging several crushing arms (which include spikes). While on the slime, Frogger does not stop moving unless he bumps into a wall (and the crushing arms don't count, not even the sides). While the arms do move in a fairly predictable pattern, and Frogger can Superhop on top of the arms (so long as they don't slide him into the wall), chances are most players will die far too quickly to learn the patterns well enough to get by on skill.
  • Reservoir Frogs as a whole isn't as difficult as the previous levels, but its biggest nuisance comes in the form of the orange frog. To get it, Frogger must first cross a series of moving raccoons, barrels, and newspapers, before reaching a series of slime-covered logs with slugs crawling across. Crossing the pipes while avoiding the slugs is already difficult enough, but the most frustrating part is trying to superhop up slanted pipes, twice. Frogger doesn't stop moving on these pipes, and the slanted pipes will cause him to slip downwards unless he superhops, but chances are far too likely that he will superhop in place instead of going any more forward up the pipe as the rhythm to superhopping up this pipes is extremely difficult to get down, leading to the timer running out solely because of how long players will be stuck trying to superhop up the pipes.
  • Frogger Goes Skiing is a level whose difficulty warranted it a section in the game's manual. The entire level takes place on a sheet of ice that Frogger must slide through to get all the frogs, and while doing so, he cannot hop or rotate the camera. The first few frogs aren't so bad because of how close they are, but the green frog, the one furthest away from the starting point requires a lot of precise enemy-dodging all while making sure to not fall of the edge, which is a lot harder than it sounds as there the level as a whole, but the last section especially, isn't very wide, and with all the enemies this means there is little margin for error. Adding to that, the entire level starts off dim, and the only way Frogger can increase his visibility is eating fireflies, which only grant him temporary visibility and don't respawn after dying or collecting a baby frog.
  • While it's not an especially difficult level compared to a lot of the other levels, Honey Bee Hollow can throw a lot of players for a loop, considering how it's one of the beginning levels in the game. While avoiding the bees is as simple as hiding behind the tree stumps to keep the bees from following you, many beginning players may not be able to grasp that detail so quickly, and those just getting used to the game's mechanics will definitely have difficulty outrunning the bees when they start moving quicker and quicker, and that's not even getting into the extreme sense of urgency from the time limit.
  • Lava Crush may not seem too bad, at least for 4 of the frogs. The green frog, however, will often take you down to the final 10 seconds on the timer (and that's AFTER all of the time flies). You have to press 4 different switches (2 on each of the side paths), use the platforms activated by said switches to hit a few more switches, then use THOSE platforms to make your way to an alcove in the top center of the level where the green frog is hidden. And it doesn't help that some of the platforms are very slow, and there are even times where they won't line up perfectly. IF the platforms are aligned close enough, Frogger will automatically adjust. If not, into the lava (and back to the start) you go, and the platforms reset.
  • In the multiplayer mode, Traffic Turmoil. You start from the beginning of a five-lane road where all the cars are oncoming, and have to get all the way to the end to reach any of the level's flags. The only thing that takes away any sting is that the cars do have a predictable pattern, but it's on a per-lane basis.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Many of the flies that don't simply increase your score, your time, your lives, or replenish your visibility in cave levels (Auto-Hop, Quick Hop, and Super Tongue) count as this. In particular, all three power-ups all appear only a small handful of times each, there are two Poison Mushroom flies that cause to lose time or 500 points that both appear only about two or three times each, and perhaps most noteworthy are two special fireflies that completely recharge your visibility. Both of them only appear in one level, Webs Cavern, and never again. The power-up flies do see some more time in the spotlight in the multiplayer mode, however.
• Vindicated by History: Ultra Game Players gave the game a 1 out of 5 on initial review. When the magazine switched formats to Game Buyer a year later, they revisited the game and acknowledged positives in it they didn't before, upping the score to 3 out of 5. Though they admitted that part of the reason they gave it a higher rating was due to nostalgia (spurred by the Seinfeld episode).

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