Frogger's GBA Games - Nitro Rad

[Music] all through the early 2000s for Hucker really struggled to find a place in the modern world that konami clearly wanted to take the classic character and turn him into a big franchise but at first they really didn't know how to do it around this time Frogger would aimlessly bounce between multiple types of gameplay and even several different art styles this series had no idea what it wanted to be the first two on PlayStation took a promising direction expanding on the simple tile hopping gameplay the arcade original but all that was thrown out the window with this infamous reboot it was riddled with glitches uncomfortably perverse writing and terrible graphics but even with those things aside it was still a boring and generic platformer at its very core a Frogger hit rock bottom but while this little frog was struggling on console there was a short timeline of portable Frogger games for the Game Boy Advance each of which taking a very different approach than the recent disaster hunt ps2 there are four Frogger games you're gonna be talking about today first up we have Froggers adventures temple of the frog when I was a kid I didn't really have that many Game Boy Advance games it feels like I only had the thing for like two years for the DS came out but in my short time with the Game Boy Advance I did play a lot of Mario World a ton of Pro Skater 3 and a bunch of Temple of the Frog now this right here is actually the one and only Frogger game that I grew up playing I had this game as a kid and I remember playing quite a bit of it this was more or less my first and only exposure to what the Frogger series was and I do remember coming out of it with a fairly good opinion on Frogger so based on what I remember it's probably at least decent it seems like a lot of people grew up with this one quick google search and I found out that weirdly enough this is the second best-selling Frogger game of all time and one of the best-selling games the Game Boy Advance by extension that's actually really interesting God now I really want to see the games any good or not now so yeah let's start a new file and see how Temple the Frog holds up ooh that title screen music that is funky I like that so despite having a separate cannon from the great quest temple the Frog still seems to draw a lot of influence from it at least a means of character design I guess a Froggers design here closely resembles this design for the great quest but it's tweaked a little bit I still don't think this design looks all that great but I guess it's a little better the very least the other characters are all lifted straight from the great quest - there's lumpy zippy the turtle Lily the fairy these guys are all back but these are different versions of these characters they look exactly the same but they certainly don't act the same way and by that I mean they act normal and not weird as hell the story begins with lumpy the toad explaining the Frogger that firefly swamp is dying because a grim reaper named mr. d stole the elements that keep the swamp alive interesting how Mr D is the main villain this time that's actually another character from the great quest I completely forgot to mention this part in my video about the game but there's this one part where you find the Grim Reaper himself in this ancient tree cave and after you beat him he takes off his hood and it's you he's you he is Frogger like you are him I guess they're going for like the whole self-understanding trial a Luke Skywalker in the cave sort of thing but it made no sense to be shoehorned into this plot and then forgotten about after Frogger takes nothing from it and does not develop as a character at all so that throwaway villain from that throwaway part of the game is now the main villain in this game but again like the other characters this is mr. D in name only he's really a different character using the same likeness now he's pretty much just an evil skeleton that you got to stop that's all it's a super simple plot which is sort of what I expected since it's a Game Boy Advance game you don't really need much here just an excuse to leave the swamp see the world and fight some bosses I will say though while Frogger looks like the same character he was in the great quest he is much more tolerable here instead of being driven by his gross selfish desires he's now motivated by wanting to save his friends and he takes the adventure as an excuse to finally see the world outside the swamp thankfully this game returns to that tile hopping formula once again with 2d graphics instead of it being 3d like on PlayStation and wow dude these controls feel super good they're really tight and precise every type of that d-pad gives you an imminent and snappy hop accompanied with a satisfying croak sound to help get the player some one-to-one feedback tap and away of that deep head propel frog around the stage feels incredibly good here even better than it did in the PlayStation games a zip it around the stage in dodging enemies and obstacles it so literally never felt better Froggers also got a couple of other moves too you can use your tongue with the B button to lick up butterflies that will give you extra lives you can also press the a button to do a super hop which will skip a tile and finally you can rotate the direction Frogger is facing with the R and L buttons this is awesome because the one thing I didn't like about zombies revenge was that there is no way to orient yourself if you wanted to jump over a gap that you weren't already facing the direction of you had to jump off of the cliff and then hit the jump button really fast I mean it did work consistently but it always just felt kind of wrong like it wasn't gonna work all the time even if it did if that makes sense but either way this rotation move feels much better and it's super responsive too so turning another direction to hop in the midst of all the action it's always very easy to pull off and very satisfying at that the move set is fairly simple but it's pretty effective there's only three real moves but the game makes sure to get the best out of most of them that super hop is really gratifying oh that springy sound it makes oh it's so fun to do you can also use this move for jumping over certain enemies and while there will be moments where that is going to be obvious and deliver it you can also use it just to hop over projectiles in general if you're in a pinch so on top of being a fun way to navigate the area it's also another way your reflexes can help Frogger avoid danger like the other characters the enemies were also lifted from the great quest but while they were really disgusting and strange-looking in 3d the 2d sprites at least look a little bit more flattering aside from the game reusing the artwork from the great quest I'd say this is a fairly solid looking game the details are vivid and the colors are vibrant and each roll also has a distinct theme and color palette to help them all stand out like how Frogger gets a little diving helmet for the underwater level that's a really cute detail you can't use your tongue here though since the helmets in a way but the level makes sure to let you collect 1ups by simply hopping on them instead here actually you know what now that I've spent an entire level without that move I'm realizing how little it adds to the game I feel like a tongue whip could have done a little bit more than just getting extra lives the level design here is pretty similar to frog or to swampies revenge they're all linear levels but you'll have to collect a number of Ida along the way in order to finish it he can pick up these frog coins which you'll need enough of them to enter the final level and then you'll have to grab each element in the stage before you can finish it if you don't have them all by the time you reach the end it'll roadblock you until you backtrack to get them all and that can be a real pain in the ass because a lot of these obstacles are designed to be navigated one way but not the other so if you miss one and can't finish you may as well restart the level luckily that's not gonna happen very often though because most of the elements are either in plain sight or they're on an offbeat and path at the level usually makes pretty clear is the way that you should go first so unless you're really not paying attention this likely won't happen to you so while you can obviously expect navigating patterns of walking enemies there's also a good number of stage gimmicks to offer a variety of challenge like conveyor belts tiles I crumble under your feet spike traps and fire spouse Jesus doesn't just die in this game he gets forget obliterated dude still nothing on zapper though like dude they kill the crap out of this guy yeah the difficulty curve in this game is okay I guess the challenge does ramp up a fairly good deal towards the end but it never really gets all of that tough the challenge is fair and whenever I died I did feel like it was my fault but even still I never really died that much because each area was fairly simple to learn and get by the only part I found a little bit frustrating is when you have to ride this magic carpet you go a little bit too fast to be able to react to this one chunk of obstacles here and I had to restart a number of times before I had it all memorized but even then it was only a very small and brief annoyance slowly hung me up for a couple of minutes but honestly I felt a little bit disappointed you know a quick about a memorization that was the hardest thing this game gets thrown at me really well there's also boss fights I guess and they're honestly not bad each one often throws a series of obstacles and attack patterns at you that you simply have to dodge before like pressing a big button or something it's very simple but it works quite well I thought the shark boss was really cool you have to hit all the switches using the whirlpools to warp around the stage but the shark swims in a big circle undoing all the switches you've been hitting so yep outrun him and do it all as quickly as possible this boss fight actually collected more blue gems and this other guy if he runs into you get temporarily stunned you just got to collect more than him before times up and you win as simple as these fights are it is still pretty cool to see them try to have a little bit of variety with them the final boss fight with Mr D is actually really fun the attack patterns are easily some of the most challenging the game offers and the idea of using the elements against him is also really fun it'll give chase as you hit some switches you'll line them up and you try to get him to fall into a trap I think this boss fight is honestly one of the best parts of the game and honestly if you ask me that kind of makes sense it's the best part why not save it for last right Frogger hits back to the swamp or the friends he met on the journey celebrate and thank him Frogger explains that it was really cool getting to see the world around him but he can't forget that sometimes it's also fun to head back home see your friends and relax because that's what really matters hold up is that character development yeah it's tiny bit at the very least it's funny how the Game Boy Advance game could figure that out when the big mainline ps2 game couldn't yeah overall I'd say that was pretty good the controls are really tight the boss fights are cool it's really fun to play but uh my only major gripes with it I'd say is that firstly it's really short it's only an hour long and secondly while some areas offer a decent amount of challenge I do wish she got a little bit more challenging it's a little bit on the easy side a little bit on the short side but overall I'd say it's still good okay next up we have fragra advance the great quest a wild temple of a frog came out after the great quest and this Gameboy Advance port of it came out after even then making it an oddly late port I mean considering that they've already begun making Frogger games on Gameboy Advance I don't know why they bothered with this oh that's why they got a different studio to do it Vicarious Visions now there's a familiar face while they're best known these days for their incredible work with remakes back in the day they were making Game Boy Advance ports of pretty much everything imaginable including Tony Hawk which actually had some pretty solid ports again first k23 Game Boy Advance that's my jam right there the plot in this version is really just an abridged version of the plot from the console version the fairy frog mothers help at Frogger find a princess who can turn him into a prince that's it you'll run into a handful of the characters from the ps2 version but each of their story arcs has been greatly simplified to keep the pacing much faster this version of the great quest is a side scroller I find that's more or less what they always did with Game Boy Advance ports of console platformers they just made it more or less the same thing but as a side scroller and as far as side-scrollers go this is well it's playable but it certainly isn't very interesting it's very straightforward insultingly so honestly you just follow the trail of coins to the end of a level you jump across a couple platforms take out the occasional enemy in that spread your dumbass frog foo was replaced with a tongue whip attack they can aim in several different directions which I very much prefer I have no idea why the hell he was doing karate instead of this before as you make your way through the game you unlock more moves like that unsettling floating move yeah that's back just as weird-looking as it was before those magic runes also return but this time they're used for freezing enemies in place so you can either beat them faster or step on them like a platform and not a bad idea I mean it's not terribly original but it does work and it is kind of fun the graphics they are bad it uses what appears to be a similar art style to the DK country games you know like digitizing of 3d animations into 2d sprites and while the animation does have a lot of frames and is quite smooth the pixelated sprites do not look very good at all and the sprite work on the environments is so aimless it looks like they just spilled a barf bucket of pixels everywhere Donkey Kong a composition everything felt like it was carefully planned to make that transition to sprite work as smoothly as possible and even today it still looks really great but here it looks like they just hit a button without making any adjustments at all and it ended up looking really chaotic and messy and yeah that's all there really is to it it's just a clunky simple ugly as hell and very easy to decide scroller you have a ton of health and there's bugs you can eat everywhere so it's pretty unlikely you'll ever die I only died two times in the entire game and both times we're on the final boss after Frogger rescues the princess she give them a big old kiss and nothing happens oh you get the O to get the good ending you have to get an A+ on every level which means making sure to get tons of collectables on your way to the end it's not very hard to do honestly but I really don't care enough to go back to do it and honestly I like this ending a lot more it's so funny to be the idea of Frogger coming all this way and convincing a princess to kiss him just so nothing can happen because the whole legend was [ __ ] the whole time she even gets mad about it after her clothing line being a disgusted I kissed a frog which is hilarious just like temple the Frog this game is also really short I think my total playtime was like 45 minutes but yeah I probably don't have to tell you that this game is not worth playing it's not like borderline offensive like the ps2 version is but it's just as uninteresting when it comes to the gameplay and plus like you really play the ps2 version for how bad it is this is just a weird in-between it's too bad to be fun but not bad enough to be worth playing in that way right in the midst of everything else Vicarious Visions was doing at the time you could really tell this was nothing more than a paycheck for them so I really don't blame them for half-assing it okay what do we have next Oh Froggers adventures - The Lost wand this one's a direct sequel the temple of a frog and likewise it shares the same type of gameplay Frogger is once again scenery design normally I think it'd be a little bit soon for that but this is an exception let's dunk that great quest design in the trash because I think we can all agree this looks much much better this game's opening features pre-rendered 3d scenes Froggers relaxing at his frog shaped house when he wishes for another adventure to go on it's then that these bizarre magical pranks start to occur doves flying out of the fridge flowers come out of his TV remote what is going on we then meet this cute little wizard guy named hocus who tells us that the eternity wand has been shattered causing magic to go haywire in Froggers world Frogger must then work with hocus to recollect the one fragments and make everything go back to normal I like how this game has a little bit more plot this time there's more dialogue more scenes and the writing is pretty cute but while there is more of it than Temple of a frog it still does take a backseat for the gameplay and the gameplay is pretty much identical to Temple the Frog again with linear stages a live system and checkpoints sprinkled throughout each level though this time the collectibles in each level are optional instead they open a bonus level where you can grind for more lives and so those moments of clunky backtracking are avoided entirely Froggers tongue move has been greatly improved it whips out much further and instead of being only for getting 1ups you can now pick up all sorts of items with it as well as activate platforms and whatnot other than that though it's more or less the same as Temple of the Frog you still have the longer hop with the a button and the shoulder buttons will once again rotate Frogger in place the sprite work has seen some tweaks Frogger sprite is now a little pudgy er a little cuter his facial expressions come through much more prominently it's always nice to look down at my character and see yeah that content little smile on his face and I also love how he Bob's his head around if you let him idle the character designs no longer borrow from the great quest I'd say they all look a lot more appealing now but sometimes the graphics can be really bright and hard on the eyes see the Game Boy Advance often had brighter than usual graphics because back before portable consoles had those built-in lights they had to make the game easier see somehow that's why those Super Nintendo ports always looked a little bit brighter and kind of washed out so I understand why it looks like this but even by GBA standards some of these levels can be way too harsh to look at especially when there's a bunch of lava on screen the animation is really distracting I guess it is a lot less of a problem when you're playing on a smaller screen you know like what's intended but it's still pretty distracting than the less but that's really my only gripe for this thing otherwise I had a really good time with it on top of being a longer game it also offers much more challenge in Temple the Frog did the enemy patterns are way more interesting and while they can be difficult to navigate sometimes it's always totally fair the camera does a great job of showing you everything you need to see at any given time and the controls are once again very snappy and precise boss fights are also even better than they were last time - I was really impressed they were able to make these boss fights so unique from each other despite how simple those core mechanics are one has you won the attack whipping everybody with your tongue this one has you quickly moving these bombs around before they blow up this one's all about leaping between platforms dodge each wave of attacks they all feel totally different for one another and they're really good fun the only one I found a bit annoying was this piano boss it's kind of like Simon Says you got to remember what he plays and then play the same thing back to him but the last series of notes was really fast and it made me restart the fight enough times to get a little bit irritated with it whoo final moments of this game are no joke they're really tough but unlike Frogger on PlayStation I never got frustrated with it I always welcome a good challenge but the challenge has to be fair and this game gave me exactly what I was looking for in that regard I really liked this game dude like this is a blast God lost wand is precisely everything I'm looking for in a modern Frogger game they pretty much took everything that worked and templed a frog they tighten it up a little bit they add a ton more and they made it way more challenging while keeping it fair that's what I need in Frogger I'd say a temple the Frog is like a pair of training wheels than this this right here is actually riding the bike and it is a blast man I guess we just got one more Froggers journey the Forgotten relic while at a glance it does look very similar a temple the Frog in the lost wand this is actually a much different kind of game it does still use that exact same tile hopping gameplay but this will is more of an adventure game with RPG elements there's NPCs you can talk to items and upgrades to collect central hub area to connect all the levels and much more focus on the story Froggers design remains pretty much the same as it was in the lost wand but the 3d rendered cutscenes were opted out in favor of 2d illustrations and these all look really great the simple cartoon look is a really good fit for modern Froggers really didn't need that close up of his feet though why did you draw that the story's beginning is pretty ridiculous again Frogger sitting around at home whichever something exciting to happen which apparently is the plot of every freakin one of these Frogger games and a plane crashes into his yard completely demolishing his front lawn that's why he be careful what you wish for dude the pilot gets outing actually has the nerve to grill Frogger for not having a runway as if that makes sense and his reason to do this to the poor guy and then he delivers him a letter from his grandpa it explains that he's been undergoing some exciting research and want stronger to come along to go on a fun little quest to uncover a mystery though when Frogger arrives in town it turns out his grandfather has gone missing the Frogger then embarks on a journey to find his grandpa discovering what it was his grandfather was researching along the way you know what that's actually a really similar plot to start tropics of all things the gameplays split up into two major components there's a linear action stages that play pretty similar to the previous Game Boy Advance games but now there's these new town sections where you'll talk to NBC's look for clues unlock gear and find the next area Frogger stumbles upon this old relic called the O part an ancient device that his grandfather was researching and evil weasel named Eric is also trying to track down the old part relics hoping to use their power to create weapons I think it's pretty cool the game actually has a main villain throughout the plot but unfortunately you don't get to see him that much throughout the game he's more so only mentioned I think a couple of more encounters to explore the relationship between him and Frogger could have been really fun but as it stands you only see them like two times I guess there are a lot of other fun characters that do get a lot of screen time though there's Liane who will help you decode memos left by your grandpa there's dusty the mechanic doggie dude he'll turn any relics you find in the new equipment and who could forget my favorite little penguin dude this guy looks like he's straight out of Club Penguin I kind of love them he's a traveling merchant who will sell you items and aid you in your quest the dialog and characters while definitely intended for younger audiences are still very cute and enjoyable it's really cool seeing them build a whole world or Raun Frogger like this is the first time I felt like I actually got to see a little bit of that and that was really cool though I guess the story sections can be a tad repetitive it seems like you have to do the exact same thing between every action stage you bring the relic to dusty get a new item you talk to LeAnn and then you talk to every NPC in town looking for a clue and then you can go to the next level it's really the same thing every time the gameplay here feels like a slightly slower version of temple to frog but instead of having two dedicated moves you'll now unlock a variety of moves that you'll map to the a and B button it's kind of like the Gameboy Zelda games once again you've got your super hop and the tongue whip equivalent you know for picking up items and moving platforms and whatever but there's also other items like a shield for blocking projectiles a hammer for breaking through barriers a glove for pushing blocks and scuba gear to go underwater these underwater levels are easily the worst parts of this game they're so freaking slow and a lot of these enemy patterns are pretty unorthodox they can be really difficult to get through when you only move so fast you can also only use one item at a time while underwater since one button has to be occupied by the scuba gear which makes no sense because the button doesn't do anything when it's equipped so why can't it just be a passive effect so I get both of my buttons back it'd be like if the Goron tunic and the shield had to occupy two of your C buttons like what would be the point of that these block puzzles here also really overstayed their welcome I actually do like block puzzles I think I professor layton to thank for that I've always found them kind of cathartic in a way this though is way too many every time I go to the next room it's like oh my god there's another one how long is this gonna go on for those are my biggest of complaints though otherwise I do think the items had a lot of great variety here the shield was used in some really cool ways when you got a rotate all the way around to guard your back as you make your way past these projectiles you can also bring any new items you have to previously explored areas to find items that'll increase your maximum health yeah that's another weird thing about this game instead of having instant deaths and a checkpoint system like before this game tosses out the lives in favor of a health bar and now you start over if you're run out of health instead of lives and there's plenty of health pickups throughout each levels so it strikes a very different kind of balance in the previous two did I'm kind of split on this decision on one hand I really don't like how you can now just tank a hit to skip certain patterns even if you had a lot of livestock tup before you still died in one head and that was really important because it meant that you had to solve each pattern successfully at least once each here it's a lot more slack with that but at the same time I guess it does make the stakes a little bit higher in like a different kind of way like you might feel like you can be more reckless at first but after realizing you really do have to keep your health up or you'll be doing the entire stage over I did end up having just as much incentive to perform well and avoid taking damage I do like the instant death checkpoint system a lot more though because it feels much more rewarding knowing that I actually had to learn and overcome each area completely I never had the incentive to get lazy and run through enemies that opportunity is just not there and I very much prefer that overall I do think this one is quite good too it's just very different than the other ones so if you're looking for something a little more action focus something challenging I'd say play lost one instead but if you want something a little slower more puzzles more story little cuter I'd say go with this one it's also easily the longest one of these took me about four hours to beat this one but I imagine without those repetitive town sections that probably would have been knocked down quite a bit overall without a doubt my pick of the best one is easily the lost wand dude I had a freaking blast with this game it's simple challenging and effective as hell and the story while much lighter on it than forgotten relic is still very adorable honestly I'd say this is hands down the best Frogger game I've even reviewed in the series so far I absolutely recommend it to everybody who wants a good challenge I'd say the Forgotten relic is my number to pick the action isn't as interesting and the story might drag a little bit to some people but it was really cool seeing them expand on Froggers moveset and the world around him and the story was pretty fun in a Saturday morning cartoon way it kind of reminded me of like duck tales or whatever obviously my number three picks gonna have to be temple of a frog it is competent and well made but it's really short and fairly easy I wouldn't bother with it unless you wanted like an easy introduction to the lost one because in the end it's really just an easier or less interesting version of that game as for the great quest I don't think I need to tell you guys that it is not worth playing it's not bad enough to be hilarious but it is bad enough not to be of any fun I am super happy the majority these games did follow a direction closer to what swampies revenge was going for and well with that said why don't we do a bonus one this is a per on Gameboy Advance yeah I mean zapper is the true sequel to Swampy's a wrench after all so let's see how the gameboy advance version holds up as I expected it's very similar to the console version you get the tile hopping does that move that high jump and you have to collect 6 eggs to finish each level but the gameplay it's nowhere near as snappier quick like this is as fast as you can possibly go I am mashing the d-pad as fast as I can and to compensate for the slow movement the enemy patterns are very simple and not very challenging and buddy let me tell you coming off of these Frogger games this is just way too slow well and I guess it comes to zapper you guys should stick with a console version this just feels like a watered down and inferior version of it instead of something that works really well as its own thing well I guess Frogger had the edge over zapper in the end at least on Gameboy Advance that is but yeah I hope moving forward we'll see the console games take a similar direction to some of these Gameboy Advance games I think it is a great direction for the series and I do feel like there's a little bit more you can do with it too so we'll be returning the console Frogger next time with Frogger beyond this game came out after temple the Frog but before the lost one an interesting spot on the Frogger timeline where seems like they were finally starting to figure things out but that's the thing was this before during or after they figured things out was this good bad or somewhere in between that I do not know so I'm gonna be very excited and figuring that out next time with Frogger beyond yo what's up thank you so much for watching the whole video definitely you did that because you're here at the end yeah dude like Frogger lost Juan is a dope as game and I think it's like my favorite Frogger game ever so far I can't wait for that to maybe change Frogger beyond may or may not be that might be the next one but man I'm stoked I got a patreon

Channel: Nitro Rad

Views: 345,791

Keywords: nitro rad, review, frogger, frogger's adventures, temple of the frog, the lost wand, frogger's journey, the forgotten relic, frogger advance, the great quest, grim reaper, mr d, tile hopping, gameboy advance, gba, nintendo, konami, zapper, portable versions, GBA ports, ports, GBA frogger, game boy

Id: XbkiZe4tbPo

Length: 26min 8sec (1568 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 08 2020