Frogger 2
System: Game Boy Color
Publisher: Hasbro Interactive/Majesco
Developer: Majesco
Released: 2000
Genre: Puzzle/Strategy Platformer
Capabilities: Battey Backed Memory, Compatible only for Game Boy Color

The Game

Remember the old Konami arcade game, Frogger from the 1980's? Well, it’s been redone by various companies over the years on many formats from the NES, the old Game Boy, to the Playstation, PC and now the Game Boy Color. This game is suppose to be totally different from the original, so will it be just as fun as it? Let’s get onto the review and find out.

Graphics

The first thing you’ll notice was the 3-D rendered animations of the frog mascot of the game, which look surprisingly good on the Game Boy Color, of course they’re tone downed, but I swear I never thought I would see this on the Game Boy Color. The game’s in game graphics, although simple, are easy to make out, and the animation for them runs so smoothly. For the game’s in game graphics, you got many different environments like a blacktop road, a river with logs, and of course you got many obstacles on the track like oil slicks and snakes, all of these look pretty fine, but heck, these graphics can be pulled off on the old NES, and the Game Boy Color is way capable of doing better than this.

Sound

Well, you gotta nice little background tune during game play, which is nothing special, and does get repetitive right away, and for sound effects, the Game Boy does it like the rest of its titles, just little bleeps and what not which are suppose to represent you dying, hopping, and moving. Pretty poor job on the sound overall, but then again, a majority of Game Boy games have really poor sound.

Game play

In the original Frogger, you had to get five frogs across a wide road filled with vehicles into one of 5 open boxes at the end of the road, the game had about 5-8 levels, and after every level you get more vehicles blocking your way, well the concept is kind of the same here. But now instead of just roads, you need to find yourself across a river over many different fast moving logs, are roads with many cars and oil slicks and other traps to come across your way, you make it across the area, and you hop into a hole at the end to pass the stage. You get five lives for each game, and new to this is a timer, where if it runs out before you make it to the end of the level, you lose a life. Some may think of this as challenging, but it stinks to me. After every few stages, more traps are added like snakes and the logs/cars move even faster. After every stage, you get a stats screen of how fast you finished the stage and the record time for the stage. Record times, and your user profile with your own progress are saved on one of 4 save files on the game pak, via battery backed memory. Once you beat a level, you can choose just to play that one for fun or perfect your game. But game play is pretty simple overall and may seem to get boring right away.

Replay Value

Well, all the redone levels are pretty fun to play and kind of challenging for a little while, and add to the fact that you can save your progress, ups the replay of this game a little bit too, but overall, I don’t find this game as addicting as the classic Frogger I’m so use to. For me, this game had me playing for about 7-10 hours before I got tired of it after beating the 24 levels in the game. But at least you get some secrets for beating the game to make it a little worthwile.

In Brief

+: Nice 3-D rendered graphics of the Frog mascot, save your progress along the way

-: Game gets boring right away and is fairly easy to beat, really simple graphics and poor sound

The Final Ratings Rundown

Graphics: 5.8
Sound: 2.8
Game play: 6.2
Replay Value: 2.4

Overall: 4.3

Rounded to fit GameFAQs Score: 4

Comments

Well, this game proved to be very disappointing to me, and I should’ve never of boughten it. I suggest for everybody to stay away from this game, unless of course you’re a hardcore Frogger fan and need this title for your collection, and while the game may have some strong points going for it like over 20 levels of play, the game is just two boring and doesn’t have enough replay value to enjoy. I’m sticking to my TI-86 version of the game instead.