| The Deeper Side of "Frogger"
In the "Catalogue of Obsolete Entertainments,"
a fictional author evaluates the games of his youth for their
ultimate historical and philosophical significance.
May 27, 2003 | CATALOGUE OF OBSOLETE ENTERTAINMENTS
GAME: Frogger
Format: Coin-Op Arcade Machine
Manufacturer: Konami
Year 1981
In "Frogger," you must try to get your frog safely across a road, median strip and river while dodging various dangers, into a frog haven on the top of the screen. When you fill up all five frog havens, they empty out, you start over, and the game gets markedly more difficult, with more dangers introduced. That is all.
Everyone loves "Frogger." Boys and girls, women and men, rich and poor, high and low. Who doesn't love "Frogger"? It draws its power from our shared memories of powerlessness. Wherever we are now, at one time or another we have all felt the poor frog's anxiety in the face of the world's intransigence, its blind and callous disregard for our happiness or well-being. We are not killing anything in "Frogger," except the occasional fly. It is all we can do to stay alive, avoid the fast cars, snakes, gators and weasels long enough to get a lady frog and make it to the top of the screen for our moment of rest. More than anything else, we'd love to stay in that Frog Haven forever, existing in a state of amphibian bliss -- but we are forcibly dislodged, and have to repeat the whole ordeal. Most of our antagonists do not even know we exist. They are not "after" us. We are not a target. We are just in the way.
- excerpt
from Lucky
Wander Boy by
d. b. weiss
See also by d. b. weiss:
The Deeper Side of
Donkey Kong
Double Dragon and
Pac-Man
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