Frogs and Flies

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Frogs and Flies

Developer(s)	Mattel
Publisher(s)	Mattel
Release date(s)	1982
Genre(s)	Platform
Mode(s)	One player against an AI controlled opponent. Two players
Platform(s)	Arcade, Atari 2600, Commodore 64
Input	Joystick
Arcade display	Raster, standard resolution, vertical, 23 inch

Frogs and Flies is a 1982 video game by Mattel for the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 platforms. In this game, the player or players controlled a frog sitting on a lily pad. One frog was green and the other frog was red. The game could be played either by one or two players. The object of the game was to eat the most flies.

Each game would start out in the morning with a light blue sky. If there was not a second player, the system would automatically take control of the red frog within a few seconds. Each frog jumped from one lily pad to the other. During each hop, a number of flies would fly around the screen. The player would push the fire button, which caused the frog's tongue to stick out. If the frog was in the right spot ahead or behind a fly, it would catch and eat the fly. Each time a fly was captured was worth two points. The game would progress throughout the day, with the sky turning a darker shade of blue, and eventually turning black as the day ended. About a minute after the sky turned black, the two frogs would leave the screen - the green frog would exit to the left, and the red frog to the right. A firefly would then come on to the screen carrying a "The End" message, which it would leave in the center of the screen. The frog who had captured the most flies at that point was the winner.

There were two different levels to Frogs and Flies that players can select. On the first level, the jumping off and landing points were fixed, the user needed to time their jumps to catch any flies who may come into the frog's flight path. On the second level, the frogs were free to move about the ground to catch flies as the jumping and landing points were not fixed. A user could even cause a frog to jump into the water - in that case, the frog would swim back on to the nearest pad. Generally this was to be avoided since it would take several seconds for the frog to swim back to the pad.