Time to meet the Froggy in this Croaker Review. Frogger clones are as common as the letter ‘F’.
There are so many versions that you allmost can’t believe it. Everytime I am about to play a Frogger clone I become quite nervous. I mean if you love the game you definitely don’t want to combine it with a bad experience.
Title Screen Croaker – including Highscore
Croaker is really one of those clones making the Frogger family happy. The controls are smooth and exact and the challenge from level to level is really of the increase you love.
In this Frogger version you get it all. You get increased Traffic. You get increased speed on the vehicles. The objects in the river start to move and for some items they turn into a crocodile or a turtle.
It is really nice that you can see changes from the second level. I mean, to many games that are of the repetive sort tend to only change in speed and never change in the visualization.
If you love Frogger, you will love Croaker.
%
Our playability rating
In the Magazines
This implementation of the ubiquitous Frogger game has all the regular features but lacks something in presentation and playability. Four keys control the leaping motion of the family Frog as they attempt to cross the busy road and the polluted river (by jumping on and off logs and turtles — a slippery business) and fill the allocated lairs at the top of the screen. Bonus points are scored by getting home as quickly as possible. The traffic gets faster as you progress to new screens and it needs to, jerking along as it does on the first screen. It seems almost too easy to get through.
Croaker Level 2
Unfortunately, the Electron’s sound capability does not include the ability to reproduce anything like a ‘croak’ but I suppose the programmer had to try. The music (which is optional) is only a gimmick and soon grows tiresome. There is a fair amount of updating to be done on-screen so the graphics are not altogether smooth and the frogs are rather lost in the mass of moving objects. The response to the four keys is not instant and this makes play rather awkard. The arcade features are all present and correct but the game lacks impact when compared with rivals on other machines and the cassette soon finds itself a permanent place at the bottom of the pile.
From Games Computing August 1994
On the Covers
You can only love the covers from Program Power, the grid pattern and the so rich colors. This embeding the main picture in a 3D style. You can sense that the frog is about to leave the cover and jump into your bosom.
Alien like big eyes or is the red color a sign of a venom like creature. Judge for yourself if the cover gives the game the justice it deserves.
%
Our Cover Rating
The Game:
The objective in Croaker is to get your family of frogs safely across the busy motorway and over a polluted river into each of the lairs set in the embankment. To do this you must dodge between the traffic, then leap from logs to turtles without falling in.
When all five lairs have been filled you move onto a higher phase. The roads become busier, some logs turn into crocodiles, and the turtles sometimes dive, making the whole exercise much trickier. You can jump onto a crocodile’s back, but beware his jaws!
Game Controls:
Points:
Every upward jump: 10 Points; Every frog home: 100 Points.
Bonus points are achieved by getting the frog home as quickly as possible. If the Bonus Table reaches zero you lose a life.
Related content to Croaker Review
The filled up Micro/Program Power Gallery.
Browse through the gallery to look at the wonderful colours and cover designs to be found there. This is one of my favourite labels.