These two are essentially the same game, both being glossy versions of the arcade favourite. Frogger, as you might guess by the name, is the original copyright version, while Preppie is an amusing variation.

For any of you who have yet to sample its delights, Frogger involves manoeuvring a frog first across a busy road and then across a river to reach a home base at the top of the screen.

There are four lanes of traffic on the road, two lanes in each direction, and the speed of this increases as the game progresses. The frog must avoid touching any of the vehicles. On the river the opposite applies, since the frog must leap onto moving streams of logs, turtles and crocodiles to get across. Believe it or not, the frog drowns if it falls in the water.

Things are made more difficult by deadly snakes which wander across the grass between the river and the road, and by various creatures which lie in wait at your home base ready to gobble you up.

The version of Frogger for the Atari is fairly true to its ancestry, except that it is only a one-player game, and each game consists of five frogs. There are lady frogs, which wait on logs for your controlee (which is presumably a gentleman frog) to escort them home. Leaping on top of this frog of the fairer sex allows you to control the happy pair as if they were a single creature. The game has two speeds.

Preppie has a similar layout but with only three lanes of traffic on the road and on the river. In fact, the road is a fairway and is populated with lawnmowers, golf cars and bulldozers. The river starts off with boats only on it, but logs and crocodiles appear later on. Instead of a frog, you control a young student.

'Preppie' is a US term for rich spoilt kids who have attended public school. The preppie's name is given in the story which accompanies the game as Wadsworth Overcash.

Because of a bizarre college tradition, Wadsworth has to retrieve golfballs on a very dangerous course. In the first frame, there is only one golfball. It lies on the other side of the green, and must be retrieved and carried back to the starting zone. As the game progresses more balls appear. Only one ball can be carried at a time and there is a time limit.

Incidentally, instead of a snake threatening you in the central reservation, there is a giant frog!

Preppie can be played by one or two players using either one or a pair of joysticks.

In both Preppie and Frogger the graphics are superb, and they both include melodic but repetitive tunes. The music can be turned off without losing the other sound effects by pressing SELECT on Frogger or SHIFT and 'M' on Preppie.

I like both of these games, and to be honest there is not much to choose between them. Preppie wins out in terms of presentation, but the long sequences between each term make it slower. It also includes the option of starting at any level between one and nine, which can be useful once you start to master the game.

Dick Olney