Video Games of 1981 Level 3: Frogger!

<v Speaker 1>All right, everybody, welcome back to our series on the
<v Speaker 1>games of nineteen eighty one. Level three Froger.
<v Speaker 2>All right, everybody, welcome back to the Shirley You Can't
<v Speaker 2>Be Serious podcast. Today we're continuing our series on video
<v Speaker 2>games of nineteen eighty one. Today we're going to be talking.
<v Speaker 1>About Froger, one of the best video games of all time.
<v Speaker 2>It is. When I was looking at this, did you
<v Speaker 2>ever think when the two frogs are on the log
<v Speaker 2>that they're actually copulating during the game.
<v Speaker 1>So you say the frogs are hogging on the log? Okay, friendly,
<v Speaker 1>here we go, Okay, all right, so Froger, So Froger.
<v Speaker 2>Froger released June fifth, nineteen eighty one.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, So, we talked in our previous episode about the
<v Speaker 1>development of pac Man, and there are a couple of
<v Speaker 1>things that we need to kind of understand before we
<v Speaker 1>jump in here. So we've got multiple video game companies
<v Speaker 1>on both sides of the pond, Right, You've got video
<v Speaker 1>game companies in Japan, video game companies in the States.
<v Speaker 1>But the interesting thing is not all of the games
<v Speaker 1>that are successful in Japan are going to be successful
<v Speaker 1>in the United States, and vice versa. Right, Right, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>we talked about how Radar Scope was second only to
<v Speaker 1>pac Man over in Japan, but once Nintendo got it
<v Speaker 1>over here, they couldn't sell but a third of their
<v Speaker 1>small quantity of them in the States, right, And so oddly,
<v Speaker 1>the same thing almost happened with pac Man. And it's
<v Speaker 1>because of this cultural difference of cuteness tolerance, Like Japan
<v Speaker 1>loves cuteness. It's all about the cuteness. And we talked
<v Speaker 1>about the Magna art we taught you can look at
<v Speaker 1>all of the various characters that have come over from
<v Speaker 1>Japan that are big and fluffy and cute and even.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean all the anime, all the Pokemon stuff.
<v Speaker 2>The Japanese culture loves cute, cute.
<v Speaker 1>And when pac Man came out, he was cute, right,
<v Speaker 1>And the ghosts were cute. They had the eyes that
<v Speaker 1>looked like cartoon eyes, and it was just a perfect
<v Speaker 1>little maze like you would have his little kid. Fantastic
<v Speaker 1>for Japan. But when people from the Amoa Show in
<v Speaker 1>nineteen eighty looked at what pac Man had to offer,
<v Speaker 1>they ignored it. They're like, Eh, that's too cute, I
<v Speaker 1>don't I mean, our American folks are not going to
<v Speaker 1>be interested in playing this cute sea game, and bally
<v Speaker 1>Midway literally took a chance because it needed titles and
<v Speaker 1>pac Man was cheap, and so it said, you know,
<v Speaker 1>what the heck have you seen the hutsucker proxy? No,
<v Speaker 1>he keeps drawing a circle and he keeps going, you know,
<v Speaker 1>for the kids, and it's like a ball on a
<v Speaker 1>hula hoop ands all this stuff. Right, so they thought,
<v Speaker 1>this is a cute see kids game. This is a
<v Speaker 1>Namco game. Yes, it comes over and becomes the most
<v Speaker 1>successful game in history up until that point. So how
<v Speaker 1>does this all relate to Frogger? You're asking me, I'm
<v Speaker 1>asking you, would you agree that Frogger is cute? Frog
<v Speaker 1>is cute. It's definitely cute. Right, It's not a manly
<v Speaker 1>man game. It's cute.
<v Speaker 2>It's a frog jumping across the street.
<v Speaker 1>Right, Frogs are cute. And so whenever it came, it
<v Speaker 1>had been created over in Japan, right, right, Actually, the
<v Speaker 1>guy who came up with the storyline was just trying
<v Speaker 1>to think of an idea and was driving in traffic
<v Speaker 1>and literally saw a frog trying to make it across
<v Speaker 1>the road, stopped his car. If my wife listens, to
<v Speaker 1>this episode, she's gonna be like, oh my gosh, I
<v Speaker 1>had to do this as an early married person. All
<v Speaker 1>the time. I didn't rescue frogs, but I rescued a
<v Speaker 1>ton of turtles. I have scars on my arm arms
<v Speaker 1>where I've been bitten by a dog trying to rescue
<v Speaker 1>a dog that was stuck next to the side of
<v Speaker 1>the road. So he gets out, he rescues this frog.
<v Speaker 1>He gets it to the other side of the road,
<v Speaker 1>and he thinks, I've got my video game idea. They
<v Speaker 1>create it, they develop it, they send it over to
<v Speaker 1>the States, and everybody that looks at it goes too cute,
<v Speaker 1>too cute, too cute. So our hero in this particular
<v Speaker 1>story is a young lady who is a grad student
<v Speaker 1>at the University of San Diego. Okay, she's working for
<v Speaker 1>the paper. Okay, they have this yearly book that comes
<v Speaker 1>out where they try to promote commerce by highlighting different
<v Speaker 1>businesses around and her job is to go look at
<v Speaker 1>these new computer enterprises that are popping up all over
<v Speaker 1>San Diego. And this is before the Internet, obviously, so
<v Speaker 1>this involves her driving around in her car looking for
<v Speaker 1>shop fronts. Sure, and one of the one that she
<v Speaker 1>happens upon is this new video gaming company called Grimlin. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>so she goes in and she's she likes video games,
<v Speaker 1>she's a gamer herself. So she starts talking to the
<v Speaker 1>founder named Frank Fogelman. She's asking him all these questions
<v Speaker 1>and at some point she says, so, how do you
<v Speaker 1>know if a game is going to be a success
<v Speaker 1>or not? And he didn't have an answer for her,
<v Speaker 1>and so she says, you need to hire me, and
<v Speaker 1>he's like, no, you're overqualified. I don't know. She's like, listen,
<v Speaker 1>you need a marketing research person. I have experience with
<v Speaker 1>this other company. I know what I'm doing. You need
<v Speaker 1>to hire me. He says no. She calls him back
<v Speaker 1>the next week and he says no, and she calls
<v Speaker 1>him every week for two months, and finally, after two
<v Speaker 1>months he says, fine, bring your resume in. He hires her,
<v Speaker 1>and her first job is to find a game for Grimlin,
<v Speaker 1>who has recently been purchased by Sega and now Sega Grimlin. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>find a game for them to license from the library
<v Speaker 1>that they have of all these submissions that they get,
<v Speaker 1>And so she goes in this dark, nasty library room
<v Speaker 1>trying to find these things. She's literally putting in VHS
<v Speaker 1>tapes trying to find some good pitch for a game,
<v Speaker 1>and she comes across Froger. She brings it to him
<v Speaker 1>and she's like, this is great. Why haven't we licensed
<v Speaker 1>this one? And he's like, well, because we've already had
<v Speaker 1>a frog game and it was a total flop.
<v Speaker 2>That game is called Frogs.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, have you ever played it? I think I've seen
<v Speaker 1>it before. It's the frog is jumping up in the
<v Speaker 1>air trying to catch flies. It's kind of like kind
<v Speaker 1>of like duck Hunt, you know, like the flies are
<v Speaker 1>flying around and you're trying to guide your frog, okay,
<v Speaker 1>to catch the flies, and he's just floating along on
<v Speaker 1>a lily pad. It's not I can see why it
<v Speaker 1>wasn't a big success, all right, It's OK, but duck
<v Speaker 1>Hunt esque. And then they also noticed nobody else's license
<v Speaker 1>this Frogger game either, So that's another indicator this is not.
<v Speaker 2>Going to be why would we want it?
<v Speaker 1>Right? So they were banking on this game called Eliminator.
<v Speaker 1>They thought it was going to be their next big hit.
<v Speaker 1>It's the only four player vector game that has ever
<v Speaker 1>been made. It's like Starcastle or Tempest, you know, except
<v Speaker 1>they were like, you could have on the table set,
<v Speaker 1>you could have four people on each end of the table,
<v Speaker 1>and it was in color. So they're like, oh, you know, Tempest,
<v Speaker 1>big success, Ours is in color. This is going to
<v Speaker 1>be great. But it wasn't at all. And so she
<v Speaker 1>keeps saying, we need to do Frogger. They say, listen,
<v Speaker 1>if you can convince management to go for it, then sure,
<v Speaker 1>that's fine. But they knew how that was going to go,
<v Speaker 1>right because management were the executives from Paramount, Like, it's
<v Speaker 1>the same company owns Paramount, owns Sega Grimlin, and so
<v Speaker 1>it's a bunch of old men's who probably knew something
<v Speaker 1>about business, but didn't know anything about video games. Sure,
<v Speaker 1>and so she comes in, she's this young, like twenty
<v Speaker 1>early twenties girl in this manly man world. To make
<v Speaker 1>her pitch for this game. She's got little booklets that
<v Speaker 1>she's made on why she thinks it's going to be
<v Speaker 1>a success. She hands them out to each of these
<v Speaker 1>old executives from Paramount. She starts her pitch and one
<v Speaker 1>of them immediately throws it back in her face and says, look,
<v Speaker 1>we've already rejected this. It is just a woman in
<v Speaker 1>kids game. Why are you wasting our time? And she says,
<v Speaker 1>oh am I talking to the same group that rejected
<v Speaker 1>pac Man. Oh wow, and that shut everybody up. And
<v Speaker 1>so when she realizes that, everybody's like, oh crap, she
<v Speaker 1>just went there, and so she starts making her pitch,
<v Speaker 1>realizing that they're kind of backtracking on their aggressive rejection,
<v Speaker 1>and she says, listen, easily memorizable patterns, attractive presentation, yes,
<v Speaker 1>great soundtrack, all of the exact same things that pac
<v Speaker 1>Man had going for it. We have going for this.
<v Speaker 1>And all I'm asking you for is ninety days for
<v Speaker 1>us to license it from Konomi and see if we
<v Speaker 1>can get somebody to bite on it. That's it, ninety days.
<v Speaker 1>And one of the executives says, you know what, giver
<v Speaker 1>her GD kids game, we'll see what happens. And they
<v Speaker 1>let her have it sixty days. Paid thirty five hundred
<v Speaker 1>dollars for a sixty day license. Nice. So they get
<v Speaker 1>it put together, they take it to one bar. This
<v Speaker 1>time it's called Spanky Saloons Spaky Saloon in San Diego. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>who's your favorite little rascal?
<v Speaker 2>Spaky?
<v Speaker 1>Is it Alfalfa or Spanky. This saloon has almost exclusively
<v Speaker 1>guys in it. But they play tested there. Okay, it
<v Speaker 1>goes nuts, it goes nuts, got all kinds of attention,
<v Speaker 1>it's all it took. And when they showed it at
<v Speaker 1>the AMOA, which is the Amusement and Music Operators Association show,
<v Speaker 1>when they showed it there, it immediately took off, and
<v Speaker 1>Frogger is born. Nice. Nice. It becomes Sega Grimlin's biggest
<v Speaker 1>hit of the time. It's so big that Parker Brothers
<v Speaker 1>buys the home video game rights. Not only they'd buy it,
<v Speaker 1>they bid on it. They've been a quarter of a
<v Speaker 1>million dollars to get the home video game rights. Parker
<v Speaker 1>Brothers did because they had lost some other game and
<v Speaker 1>they were really angry about losing the game. They got
<v Speaker 1>turned down for the quarter of a million dollars, and
<v Speaker 1>the president was so intent he offered them half a
<v Speaker 1>million dollars from the home video rights to this game,
<v Speaker 1>which was obviously a huge boom. And let's just think
<v Speaker 1>about that for a second. In nineteen eighty one, they
<v Speaker 1>got half a million dollars. They were a company that
<v Speaker 1>didn't really exist on the rate are and they get
<v Speaker 1>half a million dollars. If not for the young grad
<v Speaker 1>student standing up to these suits, we probably would not
<v Speaker 1>have had Sega Genesis. Yeah, wouldn't have Sonic The Hedgehog. Wow,
<v Speaker 1>think about it. That's amazing. You're exactly right.
<v Speaker 2>Frogger and its success due to this girl.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah gave us signed the Hedgehog. Yeah. Wow, that's fantastic.
<v Speaker 2>Hey, you know the the home video game, the Parker
<v Speaker 2>Brothers Atari twenty six hundred Yes, cartridge, they marketed the
<v Speaker 2>Frogger game and the Empire Strikes Back cartridge at the
<v Speaker 2>same time. They spent ten million dollars marketed in them.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>George Lucas and Lucasfilm spent six million dollars marketing the
<v Speaker 2>actual movie Empire Strikes Back.
<v Speaker 1>Uh huh.
<v Speaker 2>So that's how big video games were. Okay, before we
<v Speaker 2>talk about gameplay, let's talk about the music.
<v Speaker 1>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>And once again, I'm not Japanese. I've never been to Japan.
<v Speaker 2>Like I said last time, the most Japanese thing I
<v Speaker 2>know is mister Roboto. So here's the deal. One of
<v Speaker 2>the things that is kind of distinctive about Frogger is
<v Speaker 2>the music involved in yep. Okay, So the game's opening
<v Speaker 2>tune is the first verse of a Japanese children's song
<v Speaker 2>called Inu no i'm asan.
<v Speaker 1>Let me translate that for thank you, dog Policeman.
<v Speaker 2>The dog Policeman, thank you.
<v Speaker 1>Cutesy kid music it is.
<v Speaker 2>It's sort of like Mary had a Little lamb or
<v Speaker 2>Yankee Doodle or something like that over here. It's just
<v Speaker 2>something everybody knows. It's a kid's song, but it's super catchy.
<v Speaker 2>Other tunes that are played during gameplay include the theme
<v Speaker 2>to the anime Hano No Call Lunn.
<v Speaker 1>And you can quote me on that.
<v Speaker 2>Oh my god, I got this one though, and finally
<v Speaker 2>Rascal the Raccoon.
<v Speaker 1>Right right, Okay. When they brought it over to the States,
<v Speaker 1>they replaced I think that second one with Yankee Doodle.
<v Speaker 1>There you go. Yeah, a little easier for the Americans
<v Speaker 1>to pronounce it. Yes.
<v Speaker 2>And the reason why I bring these up is because
<v Speaker 2>when you play Frogger, you have that super prominent music
<v Speaker 2>playing the entire time.
<v Speaker 1>It's part of the game experience, absolutely, and one of
<v Speaker 1>it's kind of interesting. If you go back and look,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, we're going to talk about Defender. I don't
<v Speaker 1>think there is any music in Defender no, just sound effects. Right,
<v Speaker 1>So eighty one games are just really starting to get
<v Speaker 1>soundtracks at that time. I mean pac Man had it,
<v Speaker 1>but not a whole lot of games did, and so
<v Speaker 1>that cuteness plus the kid music really added to the
<v Speaker 1>appeal in a way that they didn't expect.
<v Speaker 2>Before you get into gameplay, I wanted to mention something
<v Speaker 2>to you. Yes, Activision was a company that had split
<v Speaker 2>off of Atari and created cartridges for the twenty six hundred.
<v Speaker 2>One of the Activision games that I had was a
<v Speaker 2>game called Freeway, right right, And this was a game
<v Speaker 2>where you would playing you had a chicken and you
<v Speaker 2>were trying to cross the road.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, chicken cress in the road, get it. It's like
<v Speaker 1>a joke. I wonder why why.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know why. Maybe to get to the other side.
<v Speaker 2>But the interesting thing, so I always thought that either
<v Speaker 2>Froger copied Freeway or Freeway copied Froger, but that in
<v Speaker 2>this case that wasn't Yeah, that didn't happen in this case.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Allegedly they were developed at the same time on
<v Speaker 1>opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean. Yes, that's that's what
<v Speaker 1>I read too, And one of I don't really get
<v Speaker 1>to play games on my phone much anymore. But when
<v Speaker 1>I first had and we first started playing games, one
<v Speaker 1>of the first games that I remember getting was Crossy Road,
<v Speaker 1>which you go, yeah, a chicken going across the road,
<v Speaker 1>except it was more three D, and I was like, gosh,
<v Speaker 1>this is Frogger. This is Frogger right here. Yes, but yeah,
<v Speaker 1>they ended up having to sue quite a few folks
<v Speaker 1>just to make sure that their game wasn't infringed upon,
<v Speaker 1>and one about one point eight million dollars doing it too. Wow.
<v Speaker 2>All right, so let's talk about gameplay for a second.
<v Speaker 2>Go okay, So in Frogger, you are a frog hopping
<v Speaker 2>across a street, yes, occupied by cars going different direction, yes,
<v Speaker 2>some fast, some slow. Then you get to this median
<v Speaker 2>where you have a safe spot, break a break, and
<v Speaker 2>then you have to jump on either turtles or logs,
<v Speaker 2>and then finally you jump into a home space frog
<v Speaker 2>home where the frog lives right right and you have
<v Speaker 2>to do that continually until.
<v Speaker 1>You fill I think five frog homes. Five frog homes. Yes.
<v Speaker 2>The cool thing is is that the turtles will dive
<v Speaker 2>and sometimes there's a croctile, sometimes there's a snake, and
<v Speaker 2>it's just.
<v Speaker 1>It's just fun.
<v Speaker 2>You're just hopping across.
<v Speaker 1>To go home, you know. At the time, I mean
<v Speaker 1>we're talking about it being a kid's game, but at
<v Speaker 1>the time it had more ways to die than any
<v Speaker 1>other video game in the ARCT.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, more ways to die.
<v Speaker 1>And when you get hit by a car, it was
<v Speaker 1>like this gruesome death skull and crossbones epic sound effect.
<v Speaker 2>And it wasn't like, yeah, Mario just sort of had
<v Speaker 2>this dizzy thing and fell on his back. Yeah, this
<v Speaker 2>was like a full on splat.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yes, so you could die. You could die by
<v Speaker 1>getting hit by a car. You could die by running
<v Speaker 1>into a car. Yes, you could die by jumping into
<v Speaker 1>the water in some weird universe where frogs can't swim.
<v Speaker 1>I guess right. You could die by riding a log
<v Speaker 1>off into the side of the screen. Yes. You could
<v Speaker 1>get eaten by a snake on one of the logs. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>there are. Sometimes the logs were crocodiles, and if you
<v Speaker 1>jumped on the mouth side, Yep, you could die that way.
<v Speaker 1>If you hit the hedge instead of hitting inside the
<v Speaker 1>frog home, you could die that way. Sometimes there were
<v Speaker 1>alligators inside the home and you could die in that way.
<v Speaker 1>I think that's eight. I don't know what too, I'm missing,
<v Speaker 1>But there were all kinds of ways to die on it. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>the turtle could dive on you and you could drown. Right,
<v Speaker 1>the turtles go under you and you could run out
<v Speaker 1>of time. Oh right, the time limit. There you go.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, most ways to die in a video.
<v Speaker 1>In nineteen eighty one and nineteen eighty one. All right, Jason,
<v Speaker 1>as far as Frogger goes, there is a number you
<v Speaker 1>ready for this, Yes, eight hundred sixty thousand, six hundred
<v Speaker 1>and thirty. Do you know the significance of that number?
<v Speaker 1>High score? Yes, but who's I don't know, Hey, look
<v Speaker 1>at the high score GLC George Lewis Constanza. That's not you,
<v Speaker 1>is it, Yes? Oh, that would be George Costanza, who
<v Speaker 1>held the Frogger record at the Pizzeria in Seinfeld on
<v Speaker 1>the Froger Seinfeld episode, which ends with them stealing the
<v Speaker 1>game and trying to run it across the highway, much
<v Speaker 1>in the same way that the frog tries to cross
<v Speaker 1>the road.
<v Speaker 2>That episode is hilarious. George trying to cross the road
<v Speaker 2>with the video game. Yes, it doesn't make it, that's awesome.
<v Speaker 1>Spoiler alert. It doesn't make it. I played a ton
<v Speaker 1>of Froger. Yeah, me too.
<v Speaker 2>This was nominated as one of the greatest video games
<v Speaker 2>of all time.
<v Speaker 1>It absolutely is. I can't believe how many good games
<v Speaker 1>came out in that scene year. It's just amazing. It
<v Speaker 1>is amazing iconic games.
<v Speaker 2>Frogger. Let's just recap real quick.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Donkey Kong.
<v Speaker 2>Gave us Super Mario Brothers, which ultimately gave us Nintendo,
<v Speaker 2>the Nes, the Super Nes, the Nintendo sixty four and
<v Speaker 2>all the things that come of that legend of Zelda,
<v Speaker 2>all that stuff. Yes, Froger gave birth to Sega, which
<v Speaker 2>then in turn gave us Signed the Hedgehog and the
<v Speaker 2>Sega Home Genesis and all the stuff that comes with that.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, these are hugely impactful games. Absolutely. And the other
<v Speaker 1>games that came out that year were Miss pac Man,
<v Speaker 1>which led to a ton of pac Man spinoffs, Yep
<v Speaker 1>or was a part of a ton of pac Man spinoffs, Galaga,
<v Speaker 1>which became the gold standard for the space shooter games
<v Speaker 1>that had absolutely started with Space Invaders YEP, and Defender,
<v Speaker 1>which literally turned Space Invaders on its head.
<v Speaker 2>And that doesn't even cover games like Kicks and mouse
<v Speaker 2>Trap and gorf.
<v Speaker 1>Is it kicks or quicks? I call it kicks? What
<v Speaker 1>is it called? I don't know what do you call it?
<v Speaker 1>I call it quicks? Okay, it's qi X. Yeah. It's
<v Speaker 1>a fantastic game that did not get the notoriety that
<v Speaker 1>these That game's freaking fun. But it is a great,
<v Speaker 1>great game where if you don't remember it, it's the
<v Speaker 1>one where you're you're just a dot on the frame
<v Speaker 1>of the screen and you come out of the frame
<v Speaker 1>to make little boxes, and your objective is to fill
<v Speaker 1>up most of that space without getting hit by the
<v Speaker 1>little floating.
<v Speaker 2>Play a little zappra running around.
<v Speaker 1>Yeap. So that wraps up this episode. We have more
<v Speaker 1>video games coming next week in our series on the
<v Speaker 1>best video games of nineteen eighty one.
<v Speaker 2>Come back next week where we talk about mispac Man.
<v Speaker 1>Thanks for joining us.
<v Speaker 2>Go to our Facebook page, go to our Twitter page,
<v Speaker 2>go to our Patreon page. Send us an email us.
<v Speaker 1>Know how we're doing, ye Jason, you get any quarters?
<v Speaker 2>Yes, I do, but I'm saving them for myself.
<v Speaker 1>Put my quarters up on the screen.
<v Speaker 2>I got next, I got next
<v Speaker 1>Brogger in the front, liquor in the bag,