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So, here I am again, reviewing a game that has already been reviewed here at Lemon Amiga before. I only review games that I actually owned back in the good old days, so that I can use the visceral feelings that I still have from the times when I watched the world from the eyes of a child (or a teen…) and believe me, it makes all the difference. This time around I’ll be reviewing Team 17’s Superfrog.
Superfrog's main screen.
Superfrog is one of those games that I played when the Amiga was in its prime days. I remember all the enthusiasm that my friends and I felt prior to its release. The screenshots that we saw in the magazines where very, very exciting and since the Amiga didn’t have a top platformer to cope with the likes of SEGA’s Sonic the Hedgehog or Nintendo’s Super Mario, we were positively expecting that Superfrog would fill the void, especially since Team 17 was the software house behind it.
Prince charming and his fiancé. Good graphics, aren't they?
Then the game finally reached our hands. Off we went to try it, shivering with acute anticipation. We were all in the same bedroom, five pals with ages between 14 and 16. We were tearing the manual apart while the actual Amiga owner turned his sturdy machine on. When we finally loaded it, we played it at turns while all the others looked upon, with bulging eyeballs. At least apparently Superfrog was all we expected it to be. When my time to play it came, I sat in the chair, picked up the joystick and started playing. I immediately felt that “something’s not quite right”, but I was so awed by the technical aspect of the game and so contaminated by the euphoria of my friends that I could not put my finger on what was wrong. Eventually, I had to give my place to another player and I only played Superfrog again when I bought the game for myself.
As the screen indicates, this will show Superfrog's progress.
Once at home, and as owner of the game, I was able to read the manual carefully and to try the game more profoundly. My friends had told me that if you inserted disk 3 into the floppy drive the intro would load. Indeed the manual also referred that. I did so and that was the time I first saw the intro. My friends had already told me the basics of the storyline and they described the intro quite well, so I already knew what was coming. In a way, this prevented me from experiencing the feeling of watching the intro in an unprepared way. Still, the intro was entertaining to watch and had that “cartoony” look to it that instantly made it appealing.
The first World, the Forest.
So, it was now, finally, time to test Superfrog right to its very core. I must say that the game was technically impressive for the time. Even after playing Sonic the Hedgehog, Superfrog, on a purely technical point of views, was not inferior. The game boost very good graphics, designed with a fine mastery, and characters that were cute and lovable (although, I later concluded, they were devoid of true personality). The game was full screen, something that was starting to become rarer and rarer on recent Amiga games at the time. But even being full screen, the game moved at an impressive speed and possessed great fluidity of movement and smooth scrolling. All throughout the game, we never feel the hardware limits interfere in the playability. Sound wise, Superfrog was more than adequate. No top stuff, but still quite good and suitable, both the sound effects and the music. All in all, technically, Superfrog was well above par.
The second World, the Castle, is one of my personal favourites.
But, as we all now, good graphics and good sound, by themselves, are not enough to make a good game. Even as I battled my way through the levels, I kept getting that odd feeling that I had back at my friend’s house. But even now, that I was calm and alone, I couldn’t quite say what was wrong. I had to sit down and think about it. This shows that it was, at least at first, a very tiny thing. But this tiny thing almost ruined the whole game. At least it prevented it from being as good as I could have been and as good as I was expecting it to be. Eventually, I found out what was wrong with Superfrog, why it wasn’t as enjoyable as expected and the reason why, despite the technical brilliance, the game never quite did it for me.
The third World. The Circus. Not my cup of tea, I must say...
It all could be resumed to one aspect: physics. It may sound odd that I bring the issue of physics into discussion while reviewing a platform game. If it was a 3D racing game, but a 2D platformer? Unfortunately, it really is the physics that hinder Superfrog. And there are two ways in which the physics fail dramatically. The first, that was easier to deduce, was the jumping part. The main character simply jumped too high (OK, so he’s a frog, but still…). The fact that you had to push up to jump (a pet hate of mine. Jumping by pressing up simply DOES NOT cut it) also made it hard to control how much you jumped, but it was worse than most “jump by pressing up” platformers, so I saw that even when I just taped push up for a nanosecond, the frog would make a considerable leap. Also, when airborne, Superfrog’s control was not subtle enough. You had a poor control of the character once in the air. Sonic had a much better jump control, where if you tapped the button he wouldn’t jump more than a few pixels, but if you pushed the button, it would launch itself quite high. And also while airborne, Sonic’s control was very intuitive and responsive, where the character did everything you commanded it to. So, the jumping of Superfrog was physics error number one.
The forth World. Ancient Egypt. Again, one of my favourites.
Physics error number two was harder to notice. I needed a few minutes to figure it out while playing. I finally understood it when I accidentally ran to a row of spikes and died instantly (in the game, of course). It suddenly came to me: “inertia”. There is no inertia in Superfrog. When you push your joystick to either side, the main character started moving right away, as if there was no drag at all. Well… this could easily been forgiven and forgotten if the physics had inertia implemented at least when you let go of the joypad. Superfog should stop moving gradually instead of instantly. I then realized that while jumping, despite all the aforementioned issues, there was no inertia either, as if drag and gravity were ignored all the way. Superfog fell at the same, constant speed as he when up. These physic issues had a very subtle but devastating effect on playability. At least for me they had. Another thing that put me away at least a bit was the weapon system. The weapon used in the game, which proves to be necessary, though cute, can be very irritating at times, with a control method that is anything but effective and is totally inadequate at times. Many excellent games have proven that the main character needs no weapons. Sonic and BC Kid spring to mind again…
The fifth World. The classical Ice World stage. Thankfully, it's not as irritating as one might have expected.
As far as the plot goes, it’s nice and all. It has humour thrown to it and it suits the overall nature of the game. You are a prince who dates a hot princess and a wicked witch, who hates love and joy, rushes to kidnap her just for the heck of it. While not happy with just taking your loved one away from you, the witch also had the nerve of cursing you, turning you into a frog. All seemed lost but then fortune smiled. A bottle of energy drink Lucozade was floating in the river’o’despair and the small frog-prince picked it up and drank it. POOF! He was transformed into Superfrog! Now, the valiant hero is capable of rushing out in search of his loved one and to regain his manhood.
The Project F stage. Quite good.
In between levels, there are these very odd (and probably very British) slot machines on which you can gamble a whole lot of stuff. I can’t really say much about them because I NEVER gambled (OK, I may have TRIED to gamble a few times, but…). The Project F level – a spoof to Team 17’s own Project X on which Superfrog goes to space on a flying suit and blasts off a few aliens – is a fun addition to the game.
The last World before you'll confront the evil witch. Quite harder than the others and full of blind traps, one of my pet hates in platform games. It just doesn't play clean.
In the end, with all things accounted for, one can say that Superfrog is not quite challenging enough, being easy to beat even with all the flaws previously stated. This game has repeatedly been compared to Sonic the Hedgehog, even back in the glory days of old, but, sadly, Sonic this is not. One could argue that the comparison was made by the folks and that Team 17 never intended for Superfrog to be a “Sonic clone” for the Amiga. Indeed, Sonic the Hedgehog is much more “horizontal”, much more straightforward. As a good Japanese platformer, Sonic is immediatist, it gives an instant joy and has you hooked to it since moment “go” without you even realizing why. Superfrog, as an European game, is not so immediate. It has lots more twists and turns and there are secret rooms a plenty. While not being necessarily a bad thing, the problem with too much secret rooms is that they become trivial. While in Sonic discovering a secret room was an event worthy of bragging about, in Superfrog it’s just a normal event, thus almost devoid of fun. Also the level design, which has been praised in numerous occasions, has its share of bad things. There are some moments (rare, thankfully) were “leaps of faith” are required. These so leaps, which happen each time you have to jump somewhere were you can’t see where you’re going to land, are one of my major pet hates in platform games.
Beat the wicked witch and rescue your princess... or not.
But, despite all this, almost everyone seem to like this game quite a lot. I can only wonder why. I believe that we, the amigans, were just itching for a platformer that would wipe Sonic and Mario off the spot. Gremlin’s Zool had promised to just that yet failed miserably. When Superfrog came to be, we wanted it to be great so much that we got ourselves to believe in it. I think that this is still the case today, when everyone still acclaim it as the best platformer for the Amiga. I just cannot agree with that. It’s either the mass denial phenomena or I’m just way too picky (I’ve been accused of that before) but, Superfrog, while not being a bad game, is not the cherry in top of the cake. BC Kid still keeps his first place as the Amiga’s best classic platform game as far as I’m concerned.
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Very sharp, very cute, very colourful and just very good, having into consideration the Amiga capabilities. The graphics are presented in full screen and have a smooth scrolling. With a fine attention to detail and an artistic touch, the graphics are more than suited and set the overall tone of the game. The graphics are, then, truly worthy of praise. I particularly like the graphics in the Castle and Egyptian stages. If everything in Superfrog was as good as its graphics, then we would have a real gem in our hands.
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Without breaking any barriers or winning any prize, the music and the sound effects are great. There is simultaneous music and sound, which is always commendable. In terms of music, my favourites are, once again, the ones used in the Castle and Egyptian stages. The cute sound effects lend to the atmosphere and, just as the graphics, set the overall tone of the game. Again, it’s not because of the sound and music that Superfrog fails.
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The Achilles heel. If you have read the full review you’ll know what issues I’m addressing here. The physics employed in Superfrog make it far less enjoyable than what it could easily have been and that feels tragic. The weapon system is also not a good idea. The designers could have easily come up with a far better solution that the one used. The lack of a second button to jump is a major downfall. The game comes in four disks, which is considerable, but there is not much disk swapping, which is always a good thing. The few times you’ll change disks it will not interfere with the joy of playing. It’s also possible to save your high scores.
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| I cannot and will not say that this is a bad game. It is, even, quite far from it. In fact, it stands as probably as my third or second favourite platform game for the Amiga. But it just isn’t what it could and should have been. It’s a shame, isn’t it? A chance to leave an indelible mark in the history of games (like Sonic and Mario did) was lost here. I can only imagine what could have happened to Commodore if Superfrog was, indeed, the Amiga’s Sonic equivalent. Maybe we would all be playing our Amiga XZ8900 by now… Superfrog, itself, could have been so much better if the aforementioned flaws were corrected. |
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