Frogger 3D (3DS)

In 1981, Konami released an arcade game about a little frog dodging traffic as it crossed the road. Frogger would become a smash hit that still stands as one of the titans of the early arcade, but in the years since, the company has tried to build off the brand but has never found a comfortable way of doing so. With no less than three different games all claiming to be Frogger 2, a brief period where Frogger was made a humanoid character who wears clothes, and more than a few attempts to figure out how the original game’s design could be iterated on, there is no clear identity for the series beyond the inescapable shadow of the first title. Perhaps it was appropriate then that, for its 30th anniversary, the Frogger series gave evolving the initial road crossing gameplay another go, and with Frogger 3D, it’s easy to tell the team was brimming with ideas on how to do so.

 

After a cute opening where you play a brief bit of the original Frogger, you see the titular frog himself hop out from behind an arcade machine… one that just so happens to be on the same road as a trailer truck that is barreling towards the cabinet at high speeds. After the destruction of the cabinet by the runaway semi, Frogger seems to decide it is time to go on a globe-trotting adventure, but not only does he end up in places like New York City and Tokyo, but he even seems to be traveling through time, each world transition taking him years ahead in the process. Frogger is still just a regular little frog here, incapable of talking or holding objects in his hands, so his incredible journey is a little silly when juxtaposed with the fact he’s a typical frog, but things get even more delightfully outlandish when you see the substance of the stages he visits.

Frogger’s goal in a level is to safely jump his way to wherever a glowing exit portal has appeared, most stages having three rounds where the exit is placed differently each time and the hazards change between rounds. Some will feature a fourth extra exit to help you get to additional levels, and every stage also features coins to collect as something to do as you hop your way to the way onward. When you start off and you’re just hopping across city streets like in the old game, this seems like a reasonable set of goals for what looks like a small update to the original game’s idea, but the moment the semi as large a street smashes through a road with little regard for the other cars it ends up destroying, the true absurdity of Frogger 3D is introduced. The level hazards in Frogger 3D can sometimes be as simple as snakes on the sidewalk or platforms that sink into the water when you leap onto them, but the stages are more often based around unique dramatic set pieces. Frogger will find himself leaping between jet planes as they explode under missile fire, scaling the side of a skyscraper as girders fall down from above, crossing a war zone filled with tanks and landmines, and playing casino games whose chips are deadly to the touch. There are stages where you’re back to road crossing only for the car dodging to instead become about slipping through small gaps in gridlock traffic, and while Frogger still has to worry about being eaten by predators, the lava lizards on the side of an exploding volcano are much more fearsome than simple rats and birds.

 

There is an exceptional degree of creativity on show in a game packed with 60 unique levels, and part of the enjoyment of playing is seeing how the simple act of leaping around a level as a small amphibian is twisted into something outrageously over-the-top. While you can expect repeating mechanics, enemy types, and environmental objects, each level tries to at least do some new idea, even if it is just as simple as adding an overpass to a street level or throwing in boxes that will let you leap over obstacles instead of having to work your way around them. However, no matter how off-the-wall or imaginative these stage gimmicks get, no matter how impressive the idea might be or how intense it might sound on paper, you are still just a tiny frog hopping around rather small levels. For all the ingenious concepts on show, they don’t exactly translate into the gameplay style all that well. The jet plane jumping is a rather plain waiting game that is exacerbated by the fact you have to learn when to jump by losing the level a few times, the giant truck is an easily avoided obstacle once you know it exists, and most stage concepts can’t really get around the fact that your input during the action is just taking small hops around an invisible square grid to get to your destination. Some levels can be cheesed by sticking to the edge and ignoring coins or other goodies, and others ask for memorizing a large amount of moving pieces that will kill you the moment they make contact if you don’t, and while the in-between levels are decent enough because they can dress up the task in such bombastic ways, they can’t hide that your involvement is so basic.

There are some moments where the game tries to get around this though. Some of the final levels of the game break the bounds of reality and have Frogger do things like jump around the faces of a 3D cube, although since your options for traveling around it are determined by travel patterns of your enemies, you can’t really break away from the intended paths to the exit. The boss battles do add a shake-up to your goals at least, but even though your goal is now to defeat a giant foe, things still feel rather samey. For the previously mentioned giant trailer truck you need to bait it into rolling over spike strips with its wheels, for the helicopter boss you need to bait it into firing on stationary tanks who launch retaliatory shots, and while some bosses like the giant roulette are different in concept, it’s not really expanding play much more than the regular stage gimmickry. The large frog allies do try to enhance Frogger’s abilities, the tinier amphibian able to leap onto the backs of them to have access to new powers for a limited time. The oddly named Vore Frog can eat fruits that block your path but will also ignore your controls if one is nearby, the iron frog can push cars aside with ease, and the giant frog can break through the floor or other barriers to free up your level movement, but these don’t quite break the game away from the fact that some levels are learned through trial and error. There are some amusingly varied deaths for your cartoon frog, but none that make it easier to stomach that you’ll have to restart the stage after you’ve died to the obstacles you’re still learning.

 

After playing through the game’s story mode, a harder mode of the game will unlock, which only really seems to invite more moments of learning a level’s layout through failure. However, by this point in the game, a somewhat dedicated coin collector will likely have enough have to purchase special modes. In a regular level you have three lives to clear all three rounds and a timer specific to each round that will kill you if it runs out, but you can remove these external pressures if you purchase the expensive options to disable them. There are also modes outside of the main game such as a multiplayer mode with the audacious requirement of each player needing their own copy to play competitive Frogger, but the Endless Frogger option takes the original arcade game of Frogger and turns its obstacles into an endurance test. The 8-bit version of the amphibious hero will be hopping across familiar streets and logs in the river, but instead of reaching an end point, the map adds on new slight alterations to this retro design as long as you can survive. A modest idea done well enough, it lacks the ambition of the wild stages designs of the main game but is easy to do idly whereas the story stages can often require quick reflexes and uninterrupted attention to succeed.

THE VERDICT: Frogger 3D feels like a reasonable expansion of the original arcade title’s idea of hopping to the end of a small hazardous area, the game taking your tiny frog to all kinds of outlandish and imaginative new locations. However, while the ambitious level design is fun to look at, it’s not quite as fun to play. The level theming can motivate you to keep playing, but stages can swing from simple due to the basic mechanics at play to reliant on demanding obstacles that are learned through repeated failure. The shifting stage design means sometimes the concept appeal of a stage outstrips any mediocrity in play and it’s likely you’ll want to keep going just to see what the game has cooked up next, but the adventure is never as exciting as it looks, the abundant stages averaging out to an average experience.

 

And so, I give Frogger 3D for the 3DS…

An OKAY rating. Frogger 3D’s wild setting choices and level concepts end up being more fun to talk about or look at than actually play. Frogger’s movement is basic enough that most stages don’t ever strain him so far the game becomes intolerable, but there are still a good amount of stages where a new gimmick comes in that are less intuitive to engage with. Something like the electric cars in Japan that you need to use to cross back and forth over some train tracks must be activated in the proper order that requires both learning the round’s train schedule and the right path to the current exit point, the timer running out or a small movement mistake enough to require a retry. Other stages might be a little too easy if you’re willing to abandon whatever coins are placed around to try and motivate you to be risky such as the skyscraper where falling girders can sometimes be inescapable if you get greedy at the wrong time. Perhaps the better side of Frogger’s gimmickry coming from level concepts instead of new gameplay mechanics is that, even if the level initially seemed far more interesting before you actually got to play it, the simplicity of your options means it is less likely to dip into an annoying design.  Enough of the game turns out to be a serviceable way of experiencing the creativity of the development team, but if Frogger 3D could have made leaping between exploding jets as exciting as it should be, then it would have settled into something greater than mere mediocrity.

 

The flashy presentation of Frogger 3D will always have a soft spot in my heart. Seeing the simple little frog in such unusual and extreme circumstances can’t help but tickle someone looking for a creative new take on a classic formula, but the creativity was definitely used on how situations look rather than how they play. If the ambition in level concepts was matched with exciting play then Frogger 3D could have been a glorious celebration of the arcade icon’s 30th anniversary, but it’s still interesting enough despite its unusual difficulty and mild moments. This is a game where an ordinary frog goes on an insane adventure through time and space after all, so it’s hard not to be amused in some way by this strange but surprisingly suitable evolution of the Frogger formula.