A bit of Frogger trivia

On 05/16/2020 at 05:54 PM by SanAndreas

What's Konami's single most successful game? Metal Gear Solid 2? Nope. It's Frogger.

The old arcade and 2600 versions of Frogger played a little tune when you started a game. It turns out that little tune was the opening verse of a Japanese children's song whose title translates into English as "The Dog Policeman." It's about a dog policeman who tries to help a lost kitten find her mother. Here's the full version of that song.

In the early days of arcades, especially in Japan, in order for the games to show off the sound hardware, it was common for game designers to insert public domain folk and classical songs into their games. Stephen Foster's "O! Susanna" was in quite a few Japanese games, as well as the US-made Tapper. Konami apparently thought "The Dog Policeman" was a public-domain song at the time Frogger was released, but apparently it's still under copyright. Re-releases of Frogger don't include this song anymore (they do include bits of "Camptown Races" and even "Yankee Doodle.") The practice died off as sound hardware improved and composers like Koji Kondo, Koichi Sugiyama, Nobuo Uematsu, and Yuzo Koshiro became popular by composing their own iconic music to video games.

So anyway, that's another Honest Andy Fun Fact!

Matt Snee Staff Writer

05/16/2020 at 07:45 PM

I dig Frogger. I've played a lot of it. That original song is sweet though.

Super Step Contributing Writer

05/16/2020 at 09:08 PM

Huh. Interesting.

KnightDriver

05/16/2020 at 09:54 PM

Cool, I didn't know that. I totally played a lot of Frogger both arcade and 2600 back in the day.

Casey Curran Staff Writer

05/17/2020 at 07:17 AM

Also gave us an amazing episode of Seinfeld

Cary Woodham

05/17/2020 at 09:22 AM

I knew about that song in Frogger. I know some versions of it on collections don't have it, but some do. Weird. Did you know the Xbox 360 remake of Frogger also plays "Froggy's Lament," from the same guys who sang Pac-Man Fever? And that Wendy's did Frogger kids meal toys a long time ago (more than ten years ago, but still in this century). Man I'm beginning to sound like Blathers from Animal Crossing, huh? Well I did work at the National Videogame Museum for a while, so there you go. :)

I've always liked Frogger. Very approachable game. When I was a kid and we'd go to the arcade as a family, I would always run to the Pac-Man machine, my dad would make a beeline for Centipede, and my mom would hop to Frogger. She liked that game, too.

PixlBit