This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: Big-Named Games & Inspirational Apps. Additional details may be found in the original article.
Our review of Konami’s remake of the 1981 arcade game Frogger ($10) could consist of two pithy words: “skip it.” But that wouldn’t be fair: we’ve said so much more about other bad iPhone games that this one really deserves an equivalent explanation. To date ourselves a little, we’ll note that we used to play and enjoy both Frogger and its early home clones, and have since tried a few of the official sequels. Few of these titles would be worth paying $10 for on the iPhone, but some of the 3-D versions—or compilation—might be worth seeing.
Konami’s iPhone Frogger is the original game with a new coat of paint. There’s a single screen divided into two halves, one with cars, the other with logs. You need to cross the highway full of cars starting at the bottom, jump on the logs, and land on one of several spaces at the top of the screen. After five successful crosses, you move on to the next, almost identical level, but now there will be faster cars, snakes on the logs, and so on. The graphics stay the same, the action stays the same, and there’s some weak music that’s more annoying than enjoyable to keep you awake.
One gets the sense that Bootant put more effort into coding a single level of Break Classic than Konami did in the entire game engine for Frogger. The redrawn graphics aren’t attractive or interesting—they’re just more detailed versions of the 25+ year old originals, which weren’t great to begin with. All that’s really new is your ability to move with touch motions or tilts of the iPhone, the latter feature worthless in our view. Frogger in this form wouldn’t even be good as a giveaway title; for $10, it deserves to be squashed on the App Store’s superhighway. iLounge rating: D.
Our Rating
Company and Price
Company: Konami
Website: www.konami.com
Title: Frogger
Price: $10
Compatible: iPhones, iPod touches