"It's not easy being green..."

Frogger came to the Atari 2600 courtesy of Parker Brothers in the early 80's. This translation from Konami's arcade classic comes across very well on the old Atari! Your job, as if you didn't know, is to hop your little amphibious pal across a street teeming with traffic then scurry across a dangerous river to reach safe haven. As for the logic behind your frog dying when he hits water, the best I can explain is that frogs are generally still water creatures and the river sweeps them to their kingdom come.
You have a one and two player level option, as well as 3 separate skill levels to test your meddle. Once 5 of your frogs have reached their little cubby holes, you move onto the next level. The traffic moves faster, the logs and turtles move at different paces, and snakes and alligators join the fray to make the game more challenging. Since we are talkin' Atari here, there is no ending. Things keep getting faster and harder until your little froggy is doomed to become a big, dead ex-frog on the highway of life.

Graphics=8.3 Smooth and colorful 2600 graphics make Frogger easy on the eyes. Parker Brothers makes good use of the limited color palatte of the machine, with bright colored cars and earthy river colors. Even with the trademark flicker, frogger comes relatively close to it's arcade counterpart in terms of visuals.

Sound=7.0 Give Frogger credit; it had it's own little ditty when you started up the game. Other than LEAP LEAP and SPLAT! there are not a whole lot of aural things to experience, but at least there are no horrible sounds to annoy you during gameplay.

Play Control=9.0 A solid and responsive title. Your froggy's only purpose to to hop about, which he does responsively to your joystick.

Challenge=N/A As Frogger is a score based game, the challenge lies in whatever limits you set for yourself. It gets progressively harder as you clear levels.

Overall=8.4 One of the better arcade translations, I still find this version much more enjoyable than it's Playstation counterpart! A definate quality addition to any 2600 owners collection.

BRU'S MUST GET OMETER: 8.3

A lot of people don't respect the 2600, but Frogger shows a game doesn't need to be overly complex to be enjoyable!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/30/00, Updated 07/30/00