Frog Pond

How to play Frog Pond online

• Jump and shoot out the tongue: Space bar
• Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
• Choose a game variation: F11 (the console’s Select switch)
• Short or long tongue: F4 toggles the Player 1 difficulty switch (F9 for Player 2)

Gameplay

Each press of the fire button sends your frog into the air with its tongue out, and any insect it touches is caught. There are six kinds of insect, worth 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 or 32 points, with the dragonfly as the top prize. Insects you don’t catch quickly fly away, and when too many have escaped the sun sets and the game ends. Games 1 and 3 are for one player, games 2 and 4 for two; games 3 and 4 let you miss more insects. On the difficulty switch, A gives the frog a short tongue and B a long one, so B is the easier setting.

Why Frog Pond was never released

Frog Pond was aimed at young children, like Nick Turner’s earlier Demons to Diamonds. A playable version was shown at the Summer 1982 Consumer Electronics Show, and magazines covered it at the end of that year. It is very close to Mattel’s Frog Bog, sold for the 2600 as Frogs and Flies, though Turner has said the similarity was a coincidence. By his account, he wanted to double the game to 8K to add more options, but Atari would not pay for the extra memory for a children’s game, so it was shelved. A Sears version had also been planned, and Atari’s records mark the game’s part number obsolete in April 1983.