Frogger - Ports and Clones

Ports and Clones

Like many arcade games of the period, Frogger was ported to all the major home computers and consoles of the time. Parker Brothers received the license from Sega for cartridge versions, while Sierra gained the magnetic media rights. Several platforms were capable of accepting both ROM cartridges and magnetic media, thus these systems received multiple versions of the game. Sierra also sublicensed their magnetic-media rights to developers who published for systems not normally supported by Sierra (e.g. Cornsoft published the official TRS-80, Timex Sinclair 1000 and Timex Sinclair 2068 ports); because of this, even the Atari 2600 received multiple releases: a cartridge from Parker Bros. and a cassette for the Supercharger from Starpath. The Tomy Tutor version was directly licensed from Konami themselves, although it is not clear if they developed it.

Parker Bros. produced cartridge ports of Frogger for the Atari 2600, Intellivision, Atari 5200, ColecoVision, Atari 8-bit computers, VIC-20, and Commodore 64. Sierra released disk and/or tape ports for the C64 (which as a result ended up with two versions of the game), Apple II, the original 128k Macintosh, IBM PC, Atari 2600 Supercharger, and the above-mentioned versions for the TRS-80 Color Computer and Sinclair developed by UK-based Cornsoft. Parker Bros. spent $10 million on advertising Frogger, along with The Empire Strikes Back, larger than the $6 million marketing budget for a movie at the time. Parker Brothers sold 3 million cartridges of both Frogger and The Empire Strikes Back, with Frogger alone being the company's most successful first-year product, beating the sales and revenues of Merlin, their previous best-seller. Coleco also released stand-alone Mini-Arcade tabeletop versions of Frogger, which, along with Pac-Man, Galaxian, and Donkey Kong, sold three million units combined.

In addition to these official releases, there have been numerous unofficial clones including Froggy for the ZX Spectrum released by DJL Software in 1984, Acornsoft's Hopper (1983) for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron, A&F Software's Frogger (1983) for BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum, Solo Software's Frogger for the Sharp MZ-700 in the UK in 1984, and a version for the NewBrain under the name Leap Frog.

The 1981 Atari 2600 game Freeway is often considered a clone of Frogger, but both games were developed independently of the other, and both were released in 1981. Freeway, too, had a similar working title as well, "Bloody Human Freeway".

Hasbro Interactive released a new version for Microsoft Windows and the PlayStation in 1997 (in this game, Frogger is green with an orange stripe). It was a success, with the PC version alone selling nearly one million units in less than four months. The ports to the Mega Drive/Genesis and Super NES in 1998 were the last games released for those consoles in North America. A Java port of the game is currently available for compatible mobile phones.

A prototype game based on gameplay elements of Frogger was developed for Sega Game Gear, but never released—presumably due to legal issues between Sega and Konami. The prototype wasn't a direct port of the arcade game, as it had additional features and redesigned levels.

In 2005, InfoSpace teamed up with Konami Digital Entertainment to create the mobile game Frogger for Prizes, in which players across the U.S. compete in multiplayer tournaments to win daily and weekly prizes. In 2006, the mobile game version of Frogger grossed over $10 million in the United States.

A port of Frogger was released on the Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox 360 on July 12, 2006. It was developed by Digital Eclipse and published by Konami. It has two new gameplay modes: Versus speed mode and Co-op play. Some of the music, including the familiar Frogger theme, was removed from this version and replaced with other music.

Another Port of Frogger war released with the Bull Frog Lightning Console by Zero 88. It could be activated by pressing a combination of keys. It was named Frog Run and featured a highscore list.