Trivia / Frogger

• Development Gag: "Slime Sliding" and "Uncanny Crusher" from the '97 game have name entries that reference MediEvil and Beast Wars: Transformers, respectively (the latter also published by Hasbro Interactive), games in development by SCE Cambridge at the time.
• Executive Meddling: Supposedly, the 1997 game wasn't originally intended to have a multiplayer mode, but Hasbro insisted on having one included.
• Franchise Killer: Not the entire Frogger franchise, but the poor reception and sales of The Great Quest resulted in no further Frogger games following up on this one. While Frogger's Adventures: Temple of the Frog would use elements from The Great Quest, this would be dropped in the following Adventures games.
• Follow the Leader: Frogger: The Great Quest is a 3D platformer that bears a resemblance to Rayman 2: The Great Escape down to projectile based combat (but broken) and similar level design. The game even has a similar title.
• In Memoriam: The Great Quest ends its credits with a dedication to Steve Sheppard-Brodie, the voice actor for Lumpy, Count Blah, and the Magical General (otherwise best known for voicing E-102 Gamma in Sonic Adventure), who passed away from cancer prior to the game's release.
• Invisible Advertising: Most, if not all, of the Frogger's Adventures games were barely given any advertising by Konami — at most, Ancient Shadow got a trailer for E3 2005.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Most games in the series, including the '97 game, Swampy's Revenge, and the Frogger's Adventures games, have not seen any kind of re-release.
• Kids' Meal Toy: Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge received a set of four toys from Wendy's in 2001; there was a hopping figure of Frogger with a finger pump, a maze game, a checkers game, and a digital clock.
• Port Overdosed: Owing to the simplicity of its controls, its tile-based gameplay, and its lack of need for sprite animations, Frogger is an exceptionally easy game to port, and it has been on virtually everything capable of playing games from the last 40 years.
  • If this circa 1983 print ad◊ is any indication, they hit the ground zooming.
• Shout-Out: The sound playing when the frog, ahem, meets the ladyfrog^note It was also used as part of the "waiting for start" jingle (i.e., the one that's heard when a coin is put in). was used in the German summer hit "Another Holiday" by the Other Ones.
• Stillborn Franchise: Or stillborn reboot in this case; it's obvious the new direction taken with The Great Quest was supposed to be an attempt to revitalize the series as it ends on a Sequel Hook (despite Frogger turning human at the end of the game), but poor reception and sales spelt out an early death knell, and Konami had to re-reboot the series in 2002. Although despite this (mainly due to the unexpected rising sales of Frogger's Adventures: Temple of the Frog for Game Boy Advance), some elements from the game such as some characters and Frogger's white shirt and brown coat with shorts design made its way into future Frogger games until My Frogger Toy Trials for Nintendo DS in 2006.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to the 1997 game's lead programmer, the game started life as something of a free-roaming type of 3D game that was going to stray somewhat from the arcade game's roots, and was developed with the PC in mind with the PSX version being the port. Due to poor feedback, this was scrapped and the game was reworked from the ground up to be more like a proper reimagining of the arcade game, with the console priorities swapping in the process (so now the PSX version was the original, and the PC version was the port).
    • According to developer notes, every zone was also planned to have five levels with a much more copious use of Cut and Paste Environments (for instance, Airshow Antics was supposed to have a second iteration); however, efforts were re-focused in making the levels better rather than making more, so in the final game the amount of levels per zone varied instead.
  • The Great Quest was originally more of an expansive and somewhat darker game with possibly a different story if the Temple of the Frog game is anything to go by. Also, concept art (aside from some unused enemies) shows some ideas for unused levels such as a Western/farm town, a clown town, a sea port town, an alien world, a swamp town with bridges and balconies, a cliff side with trees, and more elaborate goblin levels with caves, a geyser and a throne room; these ideas were scrapped due to the game's troubled and rushed production (the game was made in 11 months) and presser from Konami, leading to what the game is now, but some of these elements can be found in the GBA semi-spin-off game Frogger's Adventures: Temple of the Frog which came out the same year.
  • Blitz Games had plans for a third Frogger game—a sequel to Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge for PS2, Xbox and GameCube—but Konami wanted to take the series into a different direction, which led to Frogger: The Great Quest. The game was later made into Zapper (which, coincidentally, was released just shortly before Frogger Beyond).

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