80's Games I Played Later: Frogs and Flies

On 09/28/2019 at 10:08 PM by KnightDriver

Mattel Electronic's Frogs and Flies is a 1982 console game that was originally on Intellivision as Frog Bog. Frogs and Flies is basically the same game but with even simpler controls. Something about that made it even better.

On each side is a frog on a lily pad. Flies appear and you jump and stick out your tongue to catch them. If you fall in the water, you just swim over to a lily pad. It just slows you down.

Mark and I played it one-on-one after a run to a flea market to get games in the late 90s and had a blast competing for who would gobble the most flies. We played on the first mode where the jumping off and landing points were fixed. You just timed your jump, stuck out your tongue and grabbed flies. The screen changes color to indicate time of day until it gets dark and the game ends. The one with the most points wins.

Say what you will about how great the Intellivision controler was for sports games, but sometimes simpler was better, and you got that with an Atari joystick.

Cary Woodham

09/29/2019 at 10:11 AM

When I was a kid and we'd visit family in Alabama, one of my cousins had an Intellivision and she and I would play Frog Bog together for what seemed like hours! I guess we were easily amused as kids. I do remember it being a lot of fun, though. For that reason, I prefer the Intellivision version over the Atari one, which i only played recently on the last Flashbacks collection.

KnightDriver

09/29/2019 at 10:27 PM

They are basically the same. I enjoyed Frog Bog when I played it on Xbox's Game Room years ago.

SanAndreas

09/30/2019 at 02:23 AM

I remember a few of the Intellivision ports, the ones that came on cartridges that were basically Intellivision carts with a plastic adapter attached so they'd fit in a 2600. I remember Space Attack and Astrosmash in particular. A lot of the 2600 versions are on the Flashback Classics cartridge for Switch. I never saw an Intellivision in the wild though.

Speaking of controllers, I had an Atari 130XE. Since Atari's 8-bit computers used a lot of the same hardware as the 5200 it was super easy for Atari and amateur programmers to port 5200 games to the 8-bit computers. So you could play these games with conventional Atari and third party joysticks instead of the 5200 stick that didn't have a self-centering mechanism. People tend to crap all over the 5200, but seeing these games on the 130XE, many of them among the best arcade ports of the time along with early Lucasfilm Games classics like Rescure on Fractalus!, made me think that the 5200 could have been Atari's greatest system if it didn't have the crappy analog joystick and all the other weird design decisions.

09/30/2019 at 11:39 PM

Most of the Intellivision ports to Atari I've seen look pretty dreadful like Sea Battle. My friend had an Intellivision II console not too long ago. I never even knew that existed.

I always wanted a 7800 for those good arcade ports. I think its controller might have been a little better than the 5200's but not by much. I'd rather plug in an old 2600 controller to it, if that's possible.

I've never seen, or operated any of the Atari computers. It'd be fun to do that sometime.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

10/02/2019 at 09:55 AM

I sort of remember this game... maybe I had it on our Intellivision.

10/02/2019 at 10:59 PM

I'd be willing to bet it's the simpliest of all the Intelivision games. Most of their games were more complex than either Atari or Coleco.

goaztecs

10/02/2019 at 01:15 PM

Never played this game but I'm surprised Nintendo hasn't tried to bring this game over to the Wii or Switch. It sounds perfect as a party game with motion controls

10/02/2019 at 10:47 PM

I guess people would rather compete directly like in Smash Bros.

PixlBit