Superfrog

Team 17; 1993

It’s the kind of story you read in the papers every day: witch, princess, prince, curse, blah blah blah, and now you’re a frog. Make your way through six different worlds performing the usual platform antics — dodging hazards with well-judged leaps, dispatching enemies with the tried and tested method of jumping on their heads, and collecting coins, fruit, gems, and other gewgaws left lying around. (Why people who make evil plots also leave the instrument of their downfall lying around, and why that instrument generally involves lots of some unrelated item is something of a mystery, but it seems to be a fairly regular occurrence.)

Anyway, so far so ordinary, and nothing you’ve not seen a hundred times before, right?

WRONG! While it may not bring any anything new to the genre, what it does it does to perfection; the cartoony graphics are lovingly crafted, the animation of the enemies is fluid and flawless, and when you pick up speed it all moves at a blistering pace without a sign of flicker or slowdown. All the graphical splendour is topped off with a series of jaunty tunes and a wide array of sound effects, and it forms a pleasing audio-visual whole that can hold its head up with pride.

            

Follow the coins to a safe landing

But how does it play? Writing a decent platformer takes more than just making it look pretty; there are lots of subtle elements that need to be balanced, and here Superfrog really excels. Controls are responsive, and your froggy chum seems to have real substance and the sensations of inertia and momentum are almost palpable; before long you’ll find it second nature twisting in mid-air when leaping from platform to platform, and if you miss it’s always because you’re incompetent and not because the controls are bad! It’s also a relief to find there are no leaps of faith — when you jump off a platform you always have a very good idea of where your destination is, whether it’s safe, and indeed that there is actually something to land on. While there are drops that will kill you they’re all clearly marked — granted, you may not be able to stop in time when you’re moving at full tilt, but you never feel cheated or that your death was unfair.  Pixel perfect leaps are also nowhere to be seen; there are plenty of tricky jumps to make, but you’ll never spend several frustrating minutes trying to get right to the edge of one platform in order to make it safely over a gap. Sure, some do require precision, but it’s all about the timing and mid-air maneuvers, and in skilled hands there’s rarely need to stop moving.

            

Switches add a bit of variety

The level design is another shining star; each level is large but varied, and it’s easy to navigate your way around without getting lost. There’s the occasional switch to be thrown to open a door later in the level, a platform convention that can often be irritating; by ensuring that if you miss a switch it’s never far from the door, they serve more to get you in to the habit of investigating all the nooks and crannies rather than a pain in the arse that must be endured. Hidden passages also make an appearance, and occasional glimpses of rooms filled with tantalising coins give you a hint that there may be one nearby.

Froooogs iiiiiiin spaaaaaaaaaace...

There are another couple of things worth mentioning before summing up; because the game is so large it’s unlikely you’ll have the time or ability to finish it in one setting, so there’s a level password system.  Just to spice things up a bit, though, you don’t automatically get a password for finishing a level, you have to win it on a fruit machine mini-game; collecting coins and fruits or finishing the level quickly all earn credits, and at the end of the level these can be exchanged for bonus points or gambled, and while it’s not the most exciting mini-game you’ll ever see, it does make a nice breather after a particularly stressful level.  And for a complete change of pace, between worlds 5 and 6 there’s a little shoot-em-up, Project-F (a tribute to Project-X, one of Team 17′s other games which will be the subject of a future review); again, nothing earth shattering, although it still manages to be a lot more fun than some games that are nothing but shoot-em-ups, which speaks not only to the overall quality of this game, but also to some of the appalling dross that gets churned out!

Anyway, I don’t think there’s a lot more that can be said. Maybe one or two Mario installments slightly edge it out, but for me Superfrog remains one of the greatest platformers released on any system.

• Graphics: Awesome.  Could pass for an AGA game, and still stands up well against modern examples.
• Sound: Fits the visuals perfectly.
• Gameplay: One of the few games I’ve played from start to finish more than once; it gets challenging, but never punishing.
• Amiga annoyances: None.  Comes on four disks, and supports four drives, so disk swapping can be avoided entirely.

Overall verdict: If you like platformers, you’ll love this; a must-have for anyone’s collection.

Advertisement