Up from (Super) Obscurity
permalinkFrogger, for the Super Nintendo:
Should I go on?
Well, probably not, but I will anyway. I'm not a total stranger to video games that are thrown basically as-is onto a more powerful console, but this isn't exactly what's going on here.
The Super Nintendo's port of Frogger (hereafter to be known as SNESFrogger, which is short for "biggest con job since George Foreman's Not-Really-For-Real Boxing") is evidently one of the last video games released for the Super Nintendo.
I say "evidently" because I generally decline to research anything at any time ever because, oh, let's blame it on "Wikipedia may be unreliable" and not "chronic laziness." However some dude who totally seemed like he knew what he was talking about said so on a message board, so I'm 110% sure of my information.
However, calling it a Super Nintendo game is like saying that entering the number "60065" on a liquid-crystal display calculator is a digital representation of breasts: it suggests a thing (if you kind of squint) but that's as far as the similarity goes.
When I purchased SNESFrogger I was interested about all the new tricks and turns they could have added to the classic "frog-crossing-the-freeway-and-swamp-em-up" gameplay of the original Frogger!
Perhaps there would be vaguely 3D-looking pre-rendered models for the frogs and/or cars!
Maybe it was shot in a sort of "Mode 7 Racing" approach, as vehicles dopplered-down on you as you struggled to hop through traffic!
Or what if they turned it into some kind of JRPG, where it turns out that the by crossing the road and stream, you've played right in to that first car's hands, and you've now triggered a horrible apocalypse so devastating that one of the player-characters might actually be really really killed!!*
*: as opposed to, say, what happens when you're repeatedly mauled by a 30-foot-tall demon or a dragon or giant or something. Any unscripted damage is easily fixable by applying Pegasus Mane Trimmings or some damn thing, and these are readily available in every town on the planet. Honestly, it's a wonder your character's parents even had the OPPORTUNITY to get killed and leave him or her with hundreds of burning questions; perhaps instead of blaming the Villainous King or Emperor, our protagonist should just dope-slap the town potion merchant for not throwing in a complementary resurrection potion?
...featuring Crunchy Frog
And what additional features was I greeted by when I returned to Castle CarlMarksGuy and fired up my new purchase?
Yes, this picture, and its twin (shown below) are virtually the only new features added to SNESFrogger.
So I've effectively paid my $3 for those pictures plus a freeware-level port of a game that was decades old even in the late '90s...Or, sweet Murgatroid Forbid, you'd been suckered into buying it new back in the day -- you could have been set back half a C-note! If that was the case, you would of course have been in the late '90s...and JUST IMAGINE HOW MANY TAMAGOTCHI YOU COULD HAVE SCORED WITH THAT!
Well, let's see if it does anything neat as I progress through the levels...
I am underwhelmed.
SNESFrogger, you have treated me powerful shabbily!
Fortunately, like most low-end Super Nintendo filler efforts, the game broadcasts its development crew at the beginning of the game (perhaps because they know no one will actually get through the game?)...I was GOING to mock each and every one of these fast-talking video-game-non-enhancing hucksters by pretending that they look silly, using various faces from other superior Super Nintendo games...but it turns out this whole thing was done by two or three dudes:
And they were not good at making games. Hey, I wonder what one calls a couple of dudes who are not good?
F-R-O-G-G-E-R...
So instead, I'm going to do a little poem, of the style of, "F is for...", etc. And in keeping with the spirit of today's game, I'll try to just recycle old crap instead of doing new work! You know what that means....it's a screencapture Clip Show!
F is for...
Forklift, which you get to stand on and flex when you win a round of Pit-Fighter
R is for...
Rain Gear, as explained by Mark Davis!
O is for...
G is for ...
Gunner, from BARKLEY shut up and JAM!
the other G is for...
The Giant Slalom that you get to fall down in the The XVII Olympic Winter Games Lillehammer
E is for...
EGO, the personalized plate on the warthog's convertable in Taz-Mania
and the final R is for...
RANDY, still supposedly beating me at pool while in a time warp.
And what does that spell?
...another weekly dose of filler article here at GameWTFs!
— carlmarksguy, 2012-06-29
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Hmm, I should have found a LCD calculator emulator and tried that out. I think sometimes "6"-s look like a circle with one line on the top left, thus a lowercase "B". "8"s seem like they'd always be like a rectangle with a line through the middle. In other news: the SNES version of FROGGER....a disappointment :D