Frogs

Frogs is an arcade game that was released by Gremlin Industries in 1978 (which was 3 years before Konami's Frogger); it was described as "one jump ahead of the others" (as you can see in the flyer to the right), and the player must use a (diagonal) four-directional joystick and a single button to make a frog jump from one lily pad to another and catch flies with his tongue. You will have ninety seconds to try and catch as many flies as possible - but if the frog lands in the water (which is represented by the black background), you will lose time for it (like when the animals got the hunter in Safari, and he had to return to the "hut" in order to recover). As the player's score increased, more flies would appear on the screen, and a dragonfly would appear towards the end of the game; if you managed to catch him, you would win a free game (like when all the mines were destroyed in Blasto). But it was not as easy to catch him as it seemed, for he would occasionally dart out of range, just when a player thought he had caught him - but all players did have a good chance of doing it. It is also worth noting that Frogs was one of the first arcade games to attract female players as well as male ones, three years before Midway even thought of developing an unauthorized Pac-Man sequel (without Namco's permission).