Frogger

published by Cornsoft Group / Misosys / Cogito Software in 1983, developed by Cornsoft Group, running on TRS-80

type: action/reflex
genre: Frogger-like
series: Frogger series
perspective: bird's-eye fixed camera
player options: single player

languages: eng

1.7/5

Description

Navigate across the road and river to get home. Cars, trucks, turtles, snakes, alligators, a mate, logs, and flies make the journey interesting.

Frogger was a vertical fixed-screen arcade game. Many home conversions simply ignore this, being content to translate the gameplay to a horizontal aspect ratio (also, non scrolling). Cornsoft Group was possibly the first to attempt to keep the gameplay of the vertical aspect intact. This game utilities flip-screens to show the road and river sections separately. Parker Brothers' Frogger II would later use flip-screens to offer a 3rd screen to gameplay.

This game includes music using the one of the unusual methods available to the TRS-80 (that had absolutely no sound hardware). One of the ways was to place an AM radio placed close to the computer would pickup interference created by the TRS-80's poorly shielded circuitry. Since this involved manipulating circuitry that was intended to process logic and data, most games only managed to play the game, or play music, but never both at the same time. Frogger is impressive and unusual for having both simultaneously. It didn't use the interference method. Rather, after loading the cassette, the cassette I/O port was used to output sound.

Cornsoft Group published this game without permission and later sought and gained a license from Sega (this version is only on cassette?). Rights were later licensed to Cogito Software. Cogito then made a deal with Tandy and this game became a Radio Shack branded product with cassette and disk versions available. Finally, Misosys wholly bought the game from Cogito when they purchased all of Cornsoft Group's games. What about Parker Brothers? Well, they did have rights to Frogger on home systems. But they had cartridge rights only. Any other method of storage was available for companies wanting to make a Frogger conversion.

zerothis # 2021-05-29 14:45:21