Reviews

As I remember, this version of frogger appeared as a type from a magazine either Your Sinclair, or Your spectrum, anyway it was a magazine typo, roughly about 3 evenings hard labour of about 5 hours each night instead of homework: oh the wonders of mis spent youth! But wow when it ran: this was the best version of frogger ever made!

I used to have the magazine but gave it to the charity shop! I along with many others spent literally hours pawing in the code there were about 3 pages, and as each page of YS carried two columns of speccy listings thats a shed load of code, and of course as it was a listing, once entered you had to debug, I was meticulous about my coding I checked and double checked before running, and always saved before the test run: if you did n't and it crashed you had to type it all over again.

I think some aspect of this program required Z80 assembly, and you entered the assembly with a code loading program, and typed out the hex characters on the keyboard, as graphics between quotes. That aspect of the game is probably what made it the best version of frogger that ever was created, if was fast for the spectrum, and I just loved the crocks swimming about in the sea as a kid! It played well on the spectrum.

My final typed version was archived, and stashed carefully on tape, but when I went to university, the tapes and computer all ended up down the charity shop as I had to sell my house, and had no room. I am sure some kid is benefiting from literally loads of hours of fun from all the games, I left down there, and I am sure that the speccy community has not in fact lost the assets, as they will all appear back online soon.

As a kid, I learned shed loads about computing from doing the graft, how I wish now that the fellows doing IT had half the with of the late 70's and 80's generations.

Copyright and legal nonsense killed open access to source codes, and that is why IT is such a terrible industry today to have anything to do with: there are good resources still, the open source forge projects are great resources.

David Christmass

This is quite possibly the best game on the entire Cascade "Cassette 50" compilation, although admittedly that isn't saying a great deal. Here we genuinely have quite a reasonable port of the Frogger genre.

Before the game is even played, two things make this one stand out above most of the others found in the Cassette 50 compilation. (1) It is apparent that this program uses a fast machine code routine to horizontally scroll the road and river hazards. This makes it far better than it would have been if it were written entirely in BASIC and really saves the game. (2) "Frogger" made it into at least two other compilations besides "Cassette 50", whereas most of the other games on the tape never were re-used elsewhere.

As for playing the game itself, "Frogger" features highly detailed intricate UDG graphics making good use of the speccy's available range of colours and runs at a quite reasonable pace. It really is a game that looks good.

The difficulty is reasonably well balanced being quite difficult in a challenging rather than frustrating way.

Sound is certainly OK, consisting of a simple BEEP when the frog is moved and a sequence of BEEPs when you get killed, for example. These are very much the type of sounds expected in a BASIC arcade game.

For those accustomed to jumping on the backs of turtles and crocodiles in the more traditional Frogger games (e.g. on the Atari 2600), you must bear in mind that this game instead works the opposite way to that during the "river section". Here you must instead avoid the crocs and cargo ships and "swim" across the river.

Something that looks a bit like a giant spider patrols the central grass verge between road and river, rather than the more commonly seen grass snake. This is quite a nice touch.

On the negative side, the keyboard repeat can cause the player to unwittingly move two squares instead of one, usually resulting in instant death. This becomes less problematic as you get a feel for the "timing" of the game. There is also no key available to move the frog back down one row. I am very used to this feature in other Frogger games and so really do miss it in this one. Lack of this key can make the game seem tougher than some other versions. There's also a slight delay on initially running the game while the masses of DATA statements are read in, but this isn't overly long.

Overall this one is memorable for the decent graphics and respectable playability making it head and shoulders above most other titles on the "Cassette 50" tape. Although, it scores a three as it doesn't really reach the theoretical dizzy heights of a pure machine-code commercial single-game offering.

My situation was very similar to the David Christmas review. Evenings were spent as a fevered youth entering the code, and hoping that the code could be saved to tape before the machine overheated and crashed. But, eventually, a working game was produced like glass from sand. And its not-unreasonable as a game either.

My brother, who knew these things, reckoned that one of the poke statements was a bonus score so that the sprite could sneak up behind the spider and pull its legs off if timed right. Oddly I never managed to see this effect.

The remaining interesting point about this game was that it showed up as maybe the best entry on the Cascade 50 tape. It is unknown whether the original author of the type-in got the reward or the entry was some sneaky chancer.

Nothing to do with angry spectrums, this is a Frogger clone written in BASIC. As such, you might expect it to be a bit crap. But you'd be wrong! Spectrum Cross is surprisingly entertaining.
You can go left, right or forwards and with no way of retreating, it's very tricky. The controls are also a bit sensitive, sometimes sending you forward 2 spaces when you only wanted to advance by one. Minor quibbles aside, this is very impressive for a BASIC game and a decent game in it's own right.

After reading that this was the best rated game on Cassette 50, having originated as a magazine type-in I was intrigued to try it.
Its Frogger of course (in spite of counting your lives as 'MEN') and simple enough. Its not faithful to the original as this frog can swim and so the river crossing is not a raft across but a chance to swim in the current from crocs and ships.
Anyhow its a reasonable implementation of Frogger, bar the difficulty I had in differentiating between one key depression or two which is crucial in the game.
Better than most type ins, and understandably nostalgic for anyone who put the hard hours of typing in. Without nostalgia is just above the bottom rung so 1.6/5

Indeed, a wonderful BASIC rendition of the classic Frogger.

This shit is good ! 3´5 / 5 .

It's another BASIC Frogger game, oh goodie. I was truly fearing the worse with this one, but having played it now it surprised the hell out of me! It looks pretty, the keys are responsive to a degree and it plays fine too. The one difference in this clone is that it's done away with logs and now you can travel in the water, thank you for pointing out that frogs can actually swim in the water for once. As a BASIC game and a Frogger game, it's perfectly acceptable and indeed one of the best ones I've played as a matter of fact. Well done Stuart Nicholls, it was the only game you wrote in your life but it was a good one nevertheless.