Subject: REVIEW: Superfrog
From: [email-masked] (David Andrew Clayton)
Date: 30 Apr 1993 18:50:30 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

	Superfrog

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	Superfrog is a platform game in the style of Super Mario Bros. or
Sonic the Hedgehog.

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

	Name:		Team 17 Software, Ltd.
	Address:	Marwood House, Garden Street
			Wakefield, WF1 1DX
			England

	Telephone:	+44 0924 201846 [Monday to Friday, 10am-4pm]

LIST PRICE

	#26.99 (British Pounds)
	$69.95 (Australian)
	
	I'm not sure about American prices ($1.00 Australian = $0.70 US),
but they are bound to be much lower, since Australia has OUTRAGEOUS software
prices.  End of rant.

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	HARDWARE

		A joystick.

	SOFTWARE

		None.

COPY PROTECTION

	Disk protection:  non-AmigaDOS floppies, not copyable by normal
AmigaDOS utilities.  Not hard disk installable.  (When will hard disk
installability become standard!?)

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

	Amiga 4000/40 
	Seagate 130MB IDE hard drive
	GVP Series II SCSI hard disk controller, Quantum 200MB hard drive
	2MB Chip RAM, 4MB Fast RAM (16-bit), 16MB Fast RAM (32-bit) 
	ASDG Dual Serial Board
	NEC3D multisync monitor
	AmigaDOS 3.0 (Kickstart 39.106, Workbench 39.29)
	Competition Pro 5000 joystick

REVIEW

	I purchased Superfrog after seeing wild praise for the game from
many people in comp.sys.amiga.games.  I'm not particularly adept at platform
games, but I do find them enjoyable.  The price of this game did put me off
at first; yet, I succumbed to the claims of playability, such as:  "Finally,
a Sonic the Hedgehog killer for the Amiga!"  Sonic is, apparently, a hard
act to follow.  But on with the review.

	The game's premise is that you're a magic Prince, complete with a
bride-to-be.  The wicked witch has turned the prince into nothing more than
a little green frog.  The frog found a strange bottle, and drank from it,
and became Superfrog.

	Superfrog is a platform game, along the lines of "The Great Giana
Sisters", "Super Mario Bros", "Wonderboy in Monster Land", "Turrican", "Hard
and Heavy" and "Robocod".  You control the Superfrog with your joystick, and
hop around trying to collect pieces of fruit, coins, crowns, gems, and
various items, as well as the ubiquitous Lucozade bottles which give the
frog his super status.  Collection of coins determines when you can leave a
specific level, since each level has a toll, so you can't just find the exit
and leave.  You have to work at collecting the prerequisite number of coins
first.

	The game itself consists of 6 levels, each split into a number of
distinct stages.  The game gets progressively more difficult as you play,
starting out very easy, and ending up being rather difficult and frustrating,
as do most platform games.  Without this difficulty hike, such games would
be too easy and hence boring.  Many of the levels have secret areas, tunnels,
and holes in the ground.  There are also caches of coins hidden behind
objects, which can prove tricky to find.

	Superfrog has a sidekick, "destructo-spud", a green potato with a
single cyclopean eye.  This is your single weapon against the array of
baddies you have to get by, and it has to be found lying around on the ground
before it can be used.  Be warned that destructo-spud doesn't affect all (or
even most!) of the denizens of magic land.  And if you die, you lose your
destructo-spud until you find another one in the maze.  You can also jump on
some baddies to kill them.

	Superfrog can also acquire frog-wings in its travels, which enable
the frog to stay in the air a bit longer after it has jumped.  However, the
amount of time you can stay up in the air is limited, and you always fall
back down to the ground, no matter how many times you press the button to
flap the wings.  While you are in the air, you cannot fire destructo-spud
at your enemies.  You can, however, jump on top of many enemies to disable
them.  Having wings also helps to overcome some of the obstacles placed in
your path.

	The action is fast-paced and very smooth.  The frog is very
responsive to the joystick, and you can tell when you've made a mistake, so
the gameplay isn't all luck like some badly coded games turn out to be.  Each
time the frog does something that it shouldn't, it loses some energy.  After
five such mistakes, the frog will die, using up one of its "lives."  You can
build up your energy again by acquiring more Lucozade bottles.  Some actions
are instantly fatal (landing on or touching silver spikes), but most actions
only make you lose a unit of energy (touching a monster, or getting zapped
by a nasty).

	Team 17 seems to be proud of the musical accompaniment, and so they
should be.  There are eight different scores, and those that I have heard
are light and entertaining.  The general sound effects are well done, and
the game would be lessened if you took them away.

	An options screen, accessible before starting the game, lets you
start out with three, five or seven lives (as opposed to the documentation
which states 1, 3 or 5 lives), and play in either "easy" or "normal" mode.
Easy mode slows down the gameplay a little and lets you have more time to
finish each level.  You can save your high scores to an optional
(user-provided) high-scores disk.  There is an optional "level code" entry
line which allows you to go directly to a particular level by entering a
code.  Such codes are gained in a little side-game fruit (poker) machine.

	The fruit machine appears when you finish each stage of the game,
unless you decide just to take your bonuses as points.  It allows you to
gamble your level bonuses earned, try and increase your score, get extra
lives, or get the code for the level you have just completed.  Some people
find the machine tedious, but others think it is amusing.  It's the only way
to get the level codes though, and is a necessary part of the game.

	I like the game immensely.  It's cute, fun to play, and the
responsiveness to joystick actions is superb.

	There are, of course, bugs.  (See BUGS, below.)

DOCUMENTATION

	The game comes with a small, multilingual booklet.  Languages
included are British English, Francais, Deutsch and Italiano.  Americans
will just have to puzzle over the weird English section. :-)

LIKES AND DISLIKES

	I like the game because it is captivating and fun to play.  The
gradual increase in difficulty complements the skills you acquire while
playing the game.  Finding the secret areas in each level is rewarding,
not tedious like in the PC game "Wolfenstein 3D."

	I INTENSELY dislike having to pay $70 (Aus) for a game!  I would
also greatly appreciate hard disk installability, though I realize this
would effectively bypass the floppy disk copy protection scheme.  The wait
time to load the game from floppy disk, plus the non-multitasking while the
game is running, both marginally detract from an otherwise excellent game.

COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	Superfrog is definitely one of the better platform games.  It is as
good as Turrican 1, and better than Robocod.

BUGS

	Ah, yes, the bugs.  Firstly, the introduction sequence by Eric
Schwartz doesn't work unless you turn off the AGA mode of the A4000.  This
is a minor bug, since you would only ever want to see the introductory
storyline animation once or twice.

	The game works fine UNTIL it comes to changing disks.  When you
insert disk 2 and press the fire button to indicate the disk has changed,
the A4000 resets itself.  This is plainly mismanaged code.  Turning off the
68040 caches stops this bug from presenting itself.  You can also circumvent
the problem by inserting the second disk *before* it is called for.  I can
see that some A4000 owners will lose high scores due to this bug.

	Sometimes some aspects of the game, especially the "moving spikes,"
can get out of synchronization, so that it becomes impossible to get past
without losing some energy.  I found that moving away from that part of the
screen, and then coming back, will usually fix the problem.  I don't know if
this behaviour is a bug or a feature.

VENDOR SUPPORT

	I haven't had cause to contact them.

WARRANTY

	None that I can see.

CONCLUSIONS

	An excellent, addictive game, with style and playability that will
be hard for other software companies to beat.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

	This review is freely distributable on all media, as long as it is
not modified.  All opinions are those of the author.

	Copyright 1993 David Andrew Clayton.  All rights reserved.  All
copyrights and registered trademarks of products mentioned in this review
are acknowledged.  No copyright infringement is intended.

[email-masked]              David Andrew Clayton.        // _| _  _
[email-masked]      Canberra, Australia        \X/ (_](_](_
---

   Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews
   Send reviews to:	[email-masked]
   Request information:	[email-masked]
   Moderator mail:	[email-masked]