Frogger

Frogger was released for the Atari 800 in 1983 in a conversion published by Sierra On-Line based on the famous arcade machine from Konami and Sega. The goal is to guide a frog across a busy road full of cars and trucks and then across a river, where it must hop across the backs of turtles and logs while avoiding crocodiles and a current that sweeps it away, and it also has to watch out for diving turtles, which cannot be safely landed on the moment they disappear beneath the surface. Safely reaching one of the target nooks on the far bank unlocks the next, increasingly demanding round, and the player must gradually fill all the nooks to advance to a new difficulty level with faster vehicles and less reliable floating obstacles.

The game was built on the simple principle of carefully timed jumps, which, as rounds progressed, required an increasingly precise estimate of speed and gaps between obstacles. On the Atari 8-bit, Frogger kept its clear graphics with clearly distinguished road and river lanes, as well as brisk animation of vehicles and creatures, so the game felt just as readable as its arcade source. The sound effects accompanying jumps and mishaps were among the game's recognizable elements and helped the player sense the rhythm of each section, while the on-screen time limit kept the player in constant tension.

Frogger was among the most successful arcade brands of the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, and its home versions, including the one on the Atari 8-bit, helped keep the title's popularity alive even after the biggest arcade boom had passed. The principle of safely guiding a character through progressively harder obstacles influenced a number of later games and remains easily recognizable today as one of the fundamental archetypes of the arcade genre, one that games still return to, whether as direct remakes or as inspiration for new titles.

Why play: To experience one of the fundamental archetypes of the arcade genre that games still return to today — a straightforward challenge of safely guiding a character through progressively harder obstacles.