If you are one of those people who goes into arcades in search
of new games to play, you will be familiar with that little frog that
you have to try to get from one side of the screen to the other
where it is safe. If not, let me explain.
Croaker is an adaptation of the Frogger game in which you are presented
with a small green frog at the bottom of the television screen, and your
aim is to get this poor little thing up to the top without it getting
run over by a lot of cars.
As the game proceeds and you get all the frogs home a harder screen
appears, with more cars going faster and this time crocodiles and diving
turtles. As for what comes next I just don't know, I have not managed to
get that far yet.
To load Croaker simply type *RUN; there were no problems in loading. Once
loaded the game starts by pressing space and you are then greeted by the
sound of a chainsaw. (I think it's meant to be a frog croaking!) Colour is
good and so are the graphics on screen. In the lower left corner is the
time in which you must get all your frogs to safety and it's running out.
In the lower right corner are your remaining frogs.
The control keys are A for forwards, Z for backwards, N for left and M for
right.
I like the little frog and you feel so sorry for it; mind you the contrast
is not very good when you land on certain things, for instance the turtles,
so if you don't keep an eye on it you can lose track of where it is.
If you manage to get home, the frog croaks and fills its pen looking
happily at you. The hardest pen to fill is the leftmost one and can be
tricky as the game gets faster.
A tune is played throughout the game, which is very good quality and gives
you some idea of what the BBC is capable of. However, as the tune doesn't
seem to change, after about an hour or so you begin to wish that the
suppliers Micro Power had given you the option of switching the sound off.
This would also have been a good idea as so many of these games can end up
being played at night when other people have gone to bed.
A table of high scores is also included. At the top of the table is
the name of the person who scored the highest at Micro Power, the top
score so far is also displayed during the game.
One thing I would like to see introduced by a company producing this type
of software for computers where joysticks are not required is a change in
the keys being used. Instead of A, Z, N, M, why not S, X, W, S or K, L, O,
P? They are just as easy too use and would cut down on the excess wear and
tear on the keyboard.
As I said earlier, the colour and graphics are good and a lot of fine
detail has gone in to the making up of the program. To me this has been
the closest a program has come to the original and is good value for money.