Frogger is a 1981 action video game created by Konami and released by Sega for arcade machines. It was made available in North America by Sega/Gremlin. The goal of the game is to guide five frogs to their homes by avoiding moving cars on a busy road, then crossing a river by jumping on floating logs, turtles, and alligators.

Frogger was praised by critics when it was first released and is seen as one of the best video games ever made. It led to many similar games and several later versions in the Frogger series designed for home consoles. By 2005, 20 million copies of its different home video game versions had been sold worldwide.

Gameplay

The goal of the game is to move a frog to each of the empty homes at the top of the screen. The game begins with three, five, or seven frogs, depending on the machine's settings. If all frogs are lost, the game ends. The player uses a four-direction joystick to make the frog jump once. The game can be played by one person or two players taking turns.

The frog starts at the bottom of the screen, which has a horizontal road with fast-moving vehicles like race cars, dune buggies, trucks, and bulldozers. The player must guide the frog between lanes of traffic to avoid being hit and losing a life. After crossing the road, a median strip divides the screen. The upper half shows a river with logs, alligators, and turtles moving in opposite directions. The player can jump on moving logs and the backs of alligators and turtles to reach safety. The player must avoid snakes, otters, and the open mouths of alligators. A brightly colored female frog may appear on a log and can be carried for bonus points. At the top of the screen are five "frog homes," with at least one always open. These homes may contain bonus insects or deadly alligators.

When all five frogs are in their homes, the game moves to the next level, which is harder. After five levels, the difficulty briefly decreases, then increases again with each new level. The timer gives 30 seconds to guide each frog into a home. The timer resets to 60 ticks when a life is lost or a frog reaches a home safely.

In 1982, Softline noted that "Frogger has earned the distinction of being 'the arcade game with the most ways to die.'" There are many ways to lose a life, shown by a skull and crossbones symbol where the frog was. These include being hit by a vehicle, jumping into the river, running into snakes, otters, or an alligator's jaws, sinking on a diving turtle, falling off a log or animal, jumping into an occupied home, hitting the side of a home or bush, or running out of time.

The opening music is the first verse of a Japanese children's song called "Inu no Omawarisan" ("The Dog Policeman"). Other Japanese tunes include themes from the anime series Hana no Ko Lunlun and Rascal the Raccoon. The American version includes the same opening song plus "Yankee Doodle."

Each forward step gives 10 points, and every frog arriving safely at a home earns 50 points. Players get 10 points for every half-second of time remaining. Guiding a female frog home or catching a fly gives 200 points each. When all five frogs reach their homes to end a level, the player earns 1,000 points. A bonus frog is worth 20,000 points, and the highest score on an original arcade cabinet is 99,990. If players exceed this score, the game only keeps the last five digits.

Release

The game was created by Konami. On July 22, 1981, Sega received the only permission to make and sell the game worldwide.

Sega/Gremlin was unsure about Frogger’s ability to make money in North America because no other company had signed a deal to produce it. A previous game named Frogs, made in the same region, had failed. Many believed another game called Eliminator would be the company’s next success. Elizabeth Falconer, a forecast analyst for 3M and a writer for Copley Press (San Diego Union-Tribune), was asked by Frank Fogleman, founder of Gremlin, to look through the company’s collection of video presentations to find something worth licensing. She found Frogger and thought it deserved a chance, even though it was described as "cute." Falconer asked for a 60-day period to test the game. She convinced company leaders, who had dismissed Frogger as a "game for women and children," by comparing it to Pac-Man. Sega/Gremlin agreed to pay Konami $3,500 each day for the 60-day licensing period. A test version of the game was played at a bar in San Diego, and its success led distributors to agree to sell the game based only on the test results.

Jack Gordon, director of video game sales at Sega/Gremlin, said that many women avoided "shoot 'em up" games, and that games like Frogger filled a need for more varied options.

Ports

Frogger was adapted for many home systems during its time. Platforms like the Commodore 64 supported both ROM cartridges and magnetic media, leading to multiple versions of the game being released.

Sierra On-Line obtained the rights to produce magnetic media versions of Frogger and shared these rights with developers who created versions for systems not typically supported by Sierra. Cornsoft released official versions for the TRS-80 / Dragon 32, Timex Sinclair 1000, and Timex Sinclair 2068. Because of this, the Atari 2600 had two versions: a standard cartridge and a cassette for the Starpath Supercharger. Sierra also released disk or tape versions for the Commodore 64, Apple II, original Macintosh, IBM PC, and Supercharger-equipped Atari 2600, as well as cartridge versions for the TRS-80 Color Computer.

Parker Brothers received the license from Sega to produce cartridge versions of Frogger for systems such as the Atari 2600, Intellivision, Atari 5200, ColecoVision, Odyssey², Atari 8-bit computers, TI-99/4A, VIC-20, and Commodore 64. Parker Brothers used $10 million for advertising Frogger. The Atari 2600 version was programmed by Ed English.

Coleco created standalone Mini-Arcade tabletop versions of Frogger. These versions, along with Pac-Man, Galaxian, and Donkey Kong, sold a combined total of three million units.

Frogger was also adapted for systems like the PC-6001 and Game Boy. Two separate releases for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color occurred in 1998. Frogger was one of the six games included with the 1983 Gakken Compact Vision TV Boy.

Reception

In October 1981, the magazine Cashbox reported that Frogger might become popular because Gordon said it had no age or gender limits. Distributors confirmed this was true, noting that women enjoyed the game’s "non-aggressive yet challenging" style. Frogger’s success led to more production, making it one of the top-selling arcade games in North America in 1981. The game earned over $135 million (equal to $478 million in 2025) for Sega/Gremlin through US cabinet sales, becoming their most successful release. In Japan, Frogger ranked as the 12th highest-selling arcade game of 1981.

Home versions of Frogger sold well. The 1982 Atari 2600 version brought Parker Brothers $40 million in orders when it launched. By the end of 1982, 4 million Atari 2600 cartridges were sold, generating $80 million (equal to $267 million in 2025) in wholesale revenue. This made it Atari’s most successful product in its first year, outperforming its previous best-seller, Merlin. By 2005, over 20 million copies of Frogger’s home versions had been sold worldwide, including 5 million in the United States.

In 1981, Computer and Video Games called Frogger "one of the popular new generation of arcade games moving away from space themes." In his 1982 book Video Invaders, Steve Bloom grouped Frogger with Space Panic (1980) and Donkey Kong (1981) as "climbing games." He noted Frogger was one of the "most exciting variations" of Pac-Man’s maze theme because players "scale from the bottom of the screen to the top," making the game feel more like an obstacle course than a maze. Brett Alan Weiss of AllGame later called Frogger "one of the most beloved video games ever created" and praised its "cute and detailed graphics," "crisp sound effects," and "sharp controls."

Arcade Express reviewed the Atari VCS version in 1982, calling it a "highly authentic translation" of the arcade game that combined "great graphics with sophisticated play." Ed Driscoll of The Space Gamer said the Atari VCS version was worth buying if players liked the arcade version, noting its price was fair. Danny Goodman of Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games wrote in 1983 that the Atari 2600 version was "one of the most detailed translations" of an arcade game, highlighting the wraparound screen feature. InfoWorld’s Essential Guide to Atari Computers called the Sierra version an "entertaining arcade game." Ahoy! noted that both the Sierra disk version and Parker Brothers cartridge version for the Commodore 64 were "excellent" and "hard to choose between."

In 2013, Entertainment Weekly listed Frogger as one of the top ten games for the Atari 2600. In March 2025, The Strong National Museum of Play named Frogger as one of 12 finalists for induction into the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

Legacy

In 1997, Hasbro Interactive released Frogger, a much bigger version of the original game for Windows and the PlayStation. This version was created by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's Cambridge division. Unlike the original, this version includes many different levels. It was very successful in sales, with over 1 million copies sold for Windows in less than four months. In 1998, Hasbro released several versions of the game for the Sega Genesis, Super NES, Game.com, Game Boy, and Game Boy Color. Each version has different graphics, with the Genesis version matching the original arcade game. These versions were the last games released for those consoles in North America. Though they share the same box art, they are not connected to the 1997 remake.

In 2005, InfoSpace and Konami Digital Entertainment created a mobile game called Frogger for Prizes. Players across the U.S. competed in tournaments to win daily and weekly prizes. In 2006, the mobile version of Frogger earned over $10 million in the United States. A Java version was also released for mobile phones that could run Java programs.

Frogger was released on the Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox 360 on July 12, 2006. It was developed by Digital Eclipse and published by Konami. This version added two new gameplay modes: versus speed mode and co-op play. Some of the music was changed, including the familiar Frogger theme. This version was included in the compilation Konami Classics Vol. 1.

In 2019, Hamster Corporation released Frogger as part of their Arcade Archives series for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.

Several video game clones of Frogger exist. These include Ribbit for the Apple II (1981), Hopper for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron (1983), Frogger for the BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum (1983), Hopper for the Oric-1 and ORIC Atmos (1983), Froggy for the ZX Spectrum (1984), Frogger for the Sharp MZ-700 (1984), and Leap Frog for the NewBrain. Some clones kept the basic gameplay of Frogger but changed the style or story. For example, Pacific Coast Highway (1982) for the Atari 8-bit computers split gameplay into two screens: one for the highway and one for the water. Preppie! (1982) for the Atari 8-bit changed the frog into a preppy character collecting golf balls. Frostbite (1983) for the Atari 2600 used Frogger's river gameplay with an arctic theme. Crossy Road (2014) for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone had randomly generated road and river sections in one endless level, with only one life and one point per jump.

Frogger made its animated television debut in 1983 as a segment on CBS's Saturday Supercade cartoon lineup. The character, voiced by Bob Sarlatte, was an investigative reporter. The hardcore punk band Bad Religion included a song titled "Frogger" on their 1985 EP Back to the Known, using the game as a metaphor for traffic in Los Angeles. The song began with a sample of the game's theme music. In the 1998 Seinfeld episode "The Frogger," Jerry and George visited a closed pizzeria and found a Frogger machine with George's old high score still recorded. Frogger appears in the films Wreck-It Ralph, Pixels, and Ralph Breaks the Internet. A scene in the Teen Titans episode "Cyborg the Barbarian" parodied the game. In 2006, a group in Austin, Texas, used a modified Roomba dressed as Frogger to play a real-life version of the game. In science, "Frogger" is the name of a family of transposons ("jumping genes") in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. In 2008, the City of Melbourne created a spin-off called Grogger as part of a public service campaign to encourage safe transportation after drinking.

Konami announced a Frogger game show for Peacock, produced by Konami Cross Media NY and Eureka Productions. The show debuted on September 9, 2021.

Competition

On November 26, 1999, Rickey's World Famous Sauce offered $10,000 to the first person who could score 1,000,000 points on Frogger or $1,000 for a new world record before January 1, 2000. On March 25, 2005, Robert Mruczek offered $1,000 for beating the fictional world record of 860,630 points, as set by George Costanza in an episode of Seinfeld, or $250 for a new world record by the end of that year. On December 1, 2006, John Cunningham offered $250 for exceeding the same fictional world record of 860,630 points by February 28, 2007. These scores were not broken until after the rewards had ended.

The first verified score to beat George Costanza's fictional record of 860,630 points was set by Pat Laffaye of Westport, Connecticut, on December 22, 2009, with 896,980 points. He later set a new world record on September 21, 2017, scoring 1,029,990 points, becoming the first person to break one million points on an original arcade machine. The current Frogger world record holder is Michael Smith of Durham, North Carolina, who scored 1,404,570 points on September 21, 2024.