I often understand a particular videogame feature, design choice or logic once I've implemented it from scratch. I didn't expected that Frogger (1981) could be one of them.

Softline, an american magazine of early '80s and focuesed on Apple II computer, stated that 'Frogger has earned the ominous distinction of being 'the arcade game with the most ways to die'. In some way, this definition resemble the one of Dark Souls (2001), with his iconic message 'You Died' displayed over and over again in the most disparate events.
Wikipedia then lists a number of Frogger killers: being squashed by a car, eaten by snakes and aligators, jumping on an already occupied home, jumping into the river water (?) and so on.

Games built around variety are one of the toughest cliffs to climb of this project: mechanic implementations in Wright! aren't complete but most of the peculiar one have to be included, in order to make the game recognizable and satisfying. Olympic was one of the longest to make, with its number of disciplines and button mashing techniques to implement in order to give a glimpse of old-school olympic games. So was Frogger, the Dark Souls of the 80's, one of the hardest?

Well. No, it's quite the opposite.

Most of the Frogger logics are pretty basic: despite everything in that games tries to kill the player, quite nothing truly cares about him. Cars just spawn from the sides, snakes crosses the middle of the play area and the homes... well, they just stay put waiting for the player to occupy them and turning into cruel killers. But there is more.
The road and the river just have reversed gameplay rules: on the first section you die when touching the moving parts (cars and trucks) and live on the static area (the road) while on the second one you live when touching the moving parts (logs and turtles) and die on the static area (water).

Aligators and snakes just shares the same behaviour: they just run from one side of the screen to the other, with a killing part on the top and a cosmetic part on the bottom.
Aligators can spawn on Frogger houses in the same way of the bug bonus - same placement but with different graphics and meaning.

Frogger works more like an LCD videogame, with a lot of game elements sharing the same logic: there is some stuff moving from a side to another or blinking somewhere, variety is given by graphics and elements role only.

I'm not disappointed - it was just a funny discovery I didn't expect. Life itself is mostly jumping around in a world filled of elements moving in the same way, with just different graphics and roles. And there is a point, probably midway, when everything feels different, but it's just inverting our roles and priorities.

Plot!

Leapy the frog is coming back home! Help him on crossing the road and the river in one piece! Use UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT for moving... and that's all!

PS: In this game first revision, after a year, I've just added some sound effects. But this time I've found the article quite inspired and I still like it after relatively long time.

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