Frogger

The objective of the game is to guide a frog to each of the empty homes at the top of the screen. The game starts with three, five, or seven frogs, depending on the machine's settings. Losing all frogs results in a game over. The player uses the four-direction joystick to hop the frog once. Frogger is either single-player or two players alternating turns.

The frog starts at the bottom of the screen, which contains a horizontal road occupied by speeding vehicles such as race cars, dune buggies, trucks, and bulldozers. The player must guide the frog between opposing lanes of traffic to avoid becoming roadkill and losing a life. After crossing the road, a median strip separates the two major parts of the screen. The upper half consists of a river with logs, alligators, and turtles, all moving horizontally across the screen in opposite directions.

Reporting on Gordon's claim that Frogger's appeal lacked barriers of age or sex, Cashbox in October 1981 said "watch for it". Distributors reportedly found that Gordon's statement was accurate, with women enjoying its "non-aggressive yet challenging" gameplay. Frogger's success increased production, becoming one of the top-grossing arcade games in North America during 1981. The arcade game earned over $135 million (equivalent to $478 million in 2025) for Sega/Gremlin in US cabinet sales, becoming the most successful Sega/Gremlin release. In Japan, Frogger was the 12th highest-grossing arcade game of 1981.

Home versions of Frogger had high sales. The 1982 Atari 2600 version earned its publisher Parker Brothers $40 million in orders upon launch. By the end of the year, 4 million Atari 2600 cartridges were sold with $80,000,000 (equivalent to $267,000,000 in 2025) in wholesale revenue. It became the company's most successful first-year product, beating the sales and revenues of its previous best-seller, Merlin. By 2005, 20 million copies of the various home versions had been sold worldwide, including 5 million in the United States.

Video game clones include Ribbit for the Apple II (1981), Acornsoft's Hopper (1983) for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron, A&F Software's Frogger (1983) for BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum, Personal Software Services's Hopper for the Oric-1 in the UK (1983) and a later release for the ORIC Atmos, Froggy for the ZX Spectrum released by DJL Software (1984), Solo Software's Frogger for the Sharp MZ-700 (1984) in the UK, and Leap Frog for the NewBrain.

Several clones retain the basic gameplay of Frogger and change the style or plot. Pacific Coast Highway (1982), for the Atari 8-bit computers, splits the gameplay into two alternating screens: one for the highway, one for the water. Preppie! (1982), also for the Atari 8-bit, changes the frog to a preppy retrieving golf balls at a country club.