Video Game / Frogger 3D

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Frogger 3D is a video game in the Frogger series developed by Alpha Unit and published by Konami for the Nintendo 3DS in 2011. To date, it is the most recent Frogger game to receive a physical release on home platforms.

This game continues the grid-based tile hopping gameplay from previous Frogger games, as you navigate your frog through a variety of themed levels across several worlds. However, this game does away with many of the changes introduced throughout the later Frogger games, instead playing more like a continuation of the arcade original, or the 1997 reboot. Most of the abilities added to the series throughout the Frogger's Adventures series are gone, with your frog's primary moveset being reduced back to simply being able to hop in any of the four cardinal directions.

Another aspect of the game that calls back to these earlier games is the level structure. The levels in this game are more compact and open ended, and task you with guiding your frog to three different goals, which appear sequentially each time you reach one. To help your frogs overcome the obstacles throughout the game, certain levels feature Friend frogs that you can hop on top of, then take control of them. The Friend frogs grant access to temporary special abilities, such as increased size or the ability to eat food that blocks your path.

This game contains examples of:

• Achievement Mockery: Many of the game's achievements require you to die in specific ways, such as getting dragged offscreen by a moving platform or getting killed by each of the unique enemies.
• Achievement System: The game has over 200 different kinds of achievements you can earn while playing stages. The more you earn in one run, the more points you will get. You can also unlock pieces of artwork in the options menu by finding enough across all your runs.
• Adaptational Species Change: While most of the artwork for the original arcade game painted the playable frogs as bullfrogs, this is the first Frogger game where the frog you play as is more of a tree frog. This change would stick for the majority of future Frogger games.
• Advancing Boss of Doom: The Far East boss is a giant dragon that chases you down a linear path. If your frog gets close enough, it opens up its mouth and speeds up to try and eat you.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: The levels in the Pseudo Dimension take elements from all the previous worlds and remix them in some very strange ways.
• All Your Powers Combined: The final boss fight requires you to make use of the powers of all the friend frogs. First, you use the Vore frog to eat the fruits in the corners of the arena, then you use the Iron frog to break the tiles bordering the middle section of the arena, then you use the Big frog to squish all the enemies, and finally, you use the Luminous frog to collect all the light orbs to fire them at the boss.
• Anti-Air: The helicopters in the Military Island boss stage can be defeated by tricking them into shooting the tanks on the ground, which will prompt the tanks to shoot them down.
• Anti-Frustration Features: If you are struggling to complete a stage, you can move on without needing to pass it by spending some of the coins you've collected throughout the game to unlock the next one. You can also unlock options to turn off lives and/or the time limit if you grind enough coins.
• The Artifact: The icons showing how many lives Frogger has remaining are rendered in a fairly cartoony artstyle more reminiscent of the early 2000s Frogger games with their more anthropomorphic Frogger, even though this game's Frogger is a more realistic frog. The cartoon Frogger design also appears on the graphic that appears when you unlock a new level, as well as certain graffiti.
• Art Shift: The final boss fires out lasers that cause anything hit by them to turn into their 8-bit appearances from the original arcade game.
• Big Applesauce: The second world is New York City. The levels here challenge your frogs to do things like cross busy streets, hop across the roofs of trucks in Central Park, climb the side of a half-built skyscraper, and hop across roofs while avoiding rats.
• Big Eater: The Vore frogs are rideable frogs that can eat certain obstacles blocking your path. The downside is that they will automatically jump towards any edible items that are within two tiles away from them.
• Blackout Basement: Military Island has some stages that take place at night, where it is too dark to see your surroundings without a light source. Stage 4 has searchlights that show you the area, while Stage 5 gives you a Luminous frog that lights the area around it,
• Casino Park: World 3 is the Casino, where the levels within feature a variety of casino games that act as obstacles. These include slot machines that dispense waves of coins that can crush you, giant piles of poker chips that act as both tiles and walls, and machines that dispense cards that can either push you around or cut you in half.
• Crosshair Aware:
  • Stage 4 of Military Island shows a crosshair in the middle of the searchlights if they start tracking you. If the crosshair catches you, your frog will be shot by snipers.
  • In Military Island, crosshairs will appear on tiles that missiles are about to land on to help your frogs avoid them.
• Death from Above: Certain stages in Military Island have missiles that rain down and will kill your frog if they make contact.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Possibly. After defeating the original Frogger during the final boss fight, it appears inside the rebuilt arcade machine during the ending, happily winking at the player.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: After defeating the final boss, the flat planet the Pseudo Dimension was on explodes while your frog is returned to Earth.
• Eat the Bomb: Stage 6 of Military Island has a Vore frog that can eat the exploding grenades with no harm to itself.
• Endless Game: The Forever Crossing minigame is essentially the original arcade Frogger as an endless runner. You get one life, and you have to get as far as you can in an endless stage that alternates between roads and rivers.
• Feathered Fiend: During the World 2 Boss stage, an eagle flies overhead as you hop across the trucks. If you stay still for too long, the eagle will try to swoop down and grab you in its talons.
• Feed It a Bomb: To defeat the dragon in the Far East, you must bait it into trying to eat you frog while surrounded by the volcanic rocks so that it eats those instead and gets burned from the inside.
• 15 Puzzle: Stage 6 of the Pseudo Dimension takes place atop a 15-piece slide puzzle. Each of the fifteen tiles has a numbered button on top that will slide the tile into the empty space if your frog hops on top, and once all fifteen tiles are arranged in the right order, the final empty tile will be filled with a tile that has the goal on it.
• Gameplay Grading: Clearing each stage awards you with a bronze, silver, or gold frog depending on your score. You are almost guaranteed to get a gold frog if you can clear a stage with no deaths.
• Graffiti Town: The first world, Home Town, has Frogger hopping across roads dodging vehicles in a grungy city where the walls are adorned with graffiti.
• Gravity Screw: The later levels in the Pseudo Dimension make use of gravity tricks. One has your frog hopping on all six sides of a cube-shaped level with the ability to change sides by jumping off any of the edges, while another takes place inside a constantly rotating tube-shaped tunnel where you can hop around the entire perimeter.
• Guide Dang It!: While many of the game's achievements are awarded for doing things you are likely to do naturally during normal gameplay, some have more obtuse requirements that you aren't likely to figure out without experimentation. Stage 1-2 for example has three achievements that require you to reach the goals while only using the crosswalks when crossing the roads, which requires you to take an unorthodox path through the level in order to bypass the other obstacles on the sidewalks.
• Levels Take Flight: Stages 9 and 10 of Military Island feature your frog riding atop the wings of a fighter jet mid-flight while avoiding onslaughts of missiles flying over the top of the wings. In Stage 10, you even have to leap between jets mid-flight as they pass by.
• New Game Plus: After clearing World 6 and viewing the game's ending, the game continues into World 7, which repeats all the levels from World 1, but at increased speed. The next five worlds all follow suit.
• Nostalgia Level: When starting the game up, it begins with an arcade screen displaying the original Frogger arcade game. The player can cross the road and the river like always, and upon doing so (or pressing a button to skip this) the game continues to the opening cutscene.
• Pop the Tires: The first boss fight is against a truck that repeatedly tries to run Frogger over. Frogger is given a spike hazard that he can push side to side to try and bait the truck's tires into running it over to pop them.
• Retraux: The Forever Crossing minigame is rendered in the 8-bit style of the original Frogger arcade game. This style also appears in the game's intro, where you can play an abridged version of the arcade game that ends once you get one frog into the goal across the river.
• Revisiting the Roots: While many of the previous Frogger games expanded on the gameplay established in the original arcade game and the PlayStation reboot by adding a variety of new moves, reimagining Frogger with a more anthropomorphic "mascot" character design, and more linear levels with a point A to point B design, this game returns to a formula more in line with the older games, with you playing as a regular frog with no special moves and needing to reach multiple goals in each stage to clear them.
• Ruthless Rooftops: Stage 5 of New York City tasks your frog with navigating rooftops of skyscrapers while avoiding being eaten by rats.
• Swallowed Whole: If your frog gets caught by a snake, the snake will eat you in one bite.
• Swarm of Rats: Getting caught by a rat enemy will cause a bunch of rats to appear and surround your frog's lifeless body as they start eating it.
• Tank Goodness: Military Island features tanks that can run your frog over, similar to the cars in classic Frogger. Sometimes, one lane of tanks will stop moving before turning and moving in the opposite direction.
• Timed Mission: Every level gives you a time limit to reach the goal, which is refilled every time you do so. You can spend 1000 coins to unlock the ability to turn off the timer.
• Traintop Battle: The World 2 Boss Stage sees your frog hopping on the tops of trucks speeding down the city streets, while avoiding street signs and traffic lights that the trucks pass under.
• Unwinnable by Design:
  • Stage 7 of the Casino, the third goal appears on a platform that requires you to roll triple 7s or Jackpots on the slot machine in order to reach. If you roll triple cherries, the machine won't dispense enough coins to reach the goal, and you will have to lose a life in order to try again.
  • Stage 2 of the Far East has no way to get back to the higher platforms if you fall off, aside from getting hit by the train to reset from the start.