The frog’s movement will be triggered from an on_key_down() function, and as the frog moves, we switch to a second frame with legs outstretched, reverting back to a sitting position after a short delay. Our background graphic will provide the road, river, and grass for our frog to move over. The key elements are the frog’s movement, which use the arrow keys, vehicles that move across the screen, and floating objects – logs and turtles – moving in opposite directions. We can recreate much of Frogger’s gameplay in just a few lines of Pygame Zero code.

(Ironically, Konami’s game would fall victim to repeated cloning by other developers.) Decades later, developers still take inspiration from it Hipster Whale’s Crossy Road turned Frogger into an endless running game earlier this year, Konami returned to the creative well with Frogger in Toy Town, released on Apple Arcade. Each frog had to be safely manoeuvred to one of five alcoves within a time limit, while extra points were awarded for eating flies along the way.īefore Frogger, Konami mainly focused on churning out clones of other hit arcade games like Space Invaders and Breakout Frogger was one of its earliest original ideas, and the simplicity of its concept saw it ported to just about every home system available at the time.

The concept was simple: players used the joystick to move a succession of frogs from the bottom of the screen to the top, avoiding a variety of hazards – cars, lorries, and later, the occasional crocodile. Released in 1981 by Konami, the game appeared in assorted bars, sports halls, and arcades across the world, and became an instant hit. Why did the frog cross the road? Because Frogger would be a pretty boring game if it didn’t. Konami’s original Frogger: so iconic, it even featured in a 1998 episode of Seinfeld.

Crossy road processing code