| Trog | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Midway Games |
| Publisher(s) | Midway Games |
| Year released | 1990 |
| System(s) | Arcade, DOS, NES |
| Designer(s) | Jack Haeger, George Petro |
|---|---|
| Genre(s) | Action |
| Players | 1-4 |
| Modes | Single player, Multiplayer |
- This guide is for the 1990 arcade game. For the 1983 Sinclair ZX Spectrum game, see Trog (1983).
Trog (full title: Trog in PLAYmation!) is a Pac-Man-style arcade game that was released by Midway Games in 1990; it was the first game to run on their then-new Y-Unit hardware (a TMS34010 running at 6.25 MHz, and a Motorola M6809 running at 2 MHz, with a Yamaha YM-2151 running at 3.579580 MHz, a DAC and a HC-55516 for audio).
The players must use four 4-way joysticks to take control of one of four triceratopses - Rex (red), Bloop (blue), Spike (yellow), and Gwen (purple), with a singular button to make them punch at the eponymous Trogs - a tribe of cyclopean cavemen who are trying to kill and eat the players.
One punch will temporarily stun a Trog, but several more will remove one from the current island; brown Trogs only use their fists to beat the players to death when they catch them, while red ones will create fires and holes and use their clubs to beat the players to death, blue ones will emerge from the ground and roll big stone wheels towards the players and green ones will bounce around on springs trying to crush the players beneath them.
The players could also drown, if they walked off the edges of the islands - however, the Trogs could do the same, as well as sink into tar pits and get rolled over by their own stone wheels. After one player has collected all their eggs on the current island, they have to go to the portal marked "HOME" in order to proceed to the next island; some islands also have secret warp holes that will open up if a triceratops collects the egg that was shining at the start of the stage last, and will skip them all ahead, if one falls into them (as well as award them all 300,000 points).
On specific islands, there are doors that lead from one part of the island to another, as well as springboards, that propel the players from one part of the island to another (and propel the green Trogs off it, if they land upon them).
There are also several powerups that players can collect, including pineapples that will temporarily transform them into tyrannosauruses.
Other specific islands are also bonus stages, for which there are three types ("Trog Feasts", "Trog Barbecues" and "Diamond Mines").
There are a total of forty-nine islands in the game, and when the triceratopses make it to the last one they must fend off all the Trogs on it until they are dead then collect all the gems that appear on it.
The game's name is also derived from "troglodyte", which means a prehistoric cave-dweller. The game's full name derives from how the character sprites were animated by means of claymation, which no other game had done at the time.
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Title screen.
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Upright arcade cabinet.
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Alternative arcade flyer.
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Alternative title screen.
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Screenshot of the game.
