Frogger was one of those games that remained in memory, despite the passage of time. The arcade classic has had many revisions and reincarnations over the years, but translating the 8-bit goodness to something modern isn’t exactly an easy task. Therefore, when the makers of Frogger Decades came up with this idea, it may have been sheer madness that made them do it. However, it turned out pretty well since this game does suit well for mobile platforms.

This new game plays around with the jumping mechanic that the first game just did automatically. The frog hopped around in four directions, and Konami tried to do something fancy with it this time around. Most of the original mechanics are still there, but you can see the difference with swipes at the right side of the screen. This extra need to do something makes the game less boring than the first, since that one only had you pressing the d-pad. It’s nice of Konami to do something new. This game will test your mechanics in mobile games as you’ll be doing a lot of tapping and swiping around with this game.

Another cool feature in the game is a power-up that lets you make your frog turn into the original Frogger sprite, so it gives that nostalgic feel of the original game. The soundtrack is also good and catchy, so you’d have even more motivation to play this game again and again. When you play a level, the music plays along with the setting and it suits the gameplay itself.

As you hop through the levels, avoiding enemies and eating flies to keep the countdown timer from running out, other forms of hopping are introduced like jumping in place or a giant leap. These are handled by swiping and tapping on other parts of the screen, and here’s where the controls become a problem. Often when you want to extend your tongue or charge up a leap, the game will misinterpret your input and you’ll find yourself jumping into the river or an enemy. This would be a lot more frustrating if it wasn’t for the game’s quick loading and generous checkpoint and recovery system, but an annoyance is still an annoyance.

There are a few problems though, the most ludicrous being that your frog drowns in the water, which doesn’t make sense at all. Also, the controls doesn’t seem to always obey your commands, so you tend to do things that you don’t want. That’s mostly because of how the division between left and right parts of the screen is rather vague. Along with sometimes getting hit even though you’ve already gotten away, things can get pretty annoying here.

The good thing about Frogger Decades is that it doesn’t mess around too much with the original gameplay. It’s still essentially the Frogger that old-schoolers love, so new generations of gamers can jump in and feel the same excitement as older gamers did when 8-bit was still the in-thing. Of course, it’s not much for a frog though if it didn’t jump all the way through like it did in the original, but it’s not that bad.

Some people will see these new mechanics as annoying as hell, having to tap and swipe so much. This game is for those who fondly remember the original Frogger and those who like being good at doing tons of stuff in a game. If you want to test your reflexes, then perhaps this game can be good for you. Konami did a fine enough job to make this title a tribute to 30 years of Frogger.