The Frogger (1998):

Key Points:

• - an episode from the final season of Seinfeld
• - George Costanza was the world's greatest Frogger player
• - the writers of Seinfeld don't understand how arcade cabinents actually work

Review:

"The Frogger" is an episode surprisingly late into Seinfeld's run, where George's sub-plot is about his high score on a cabinet of Frogger. When he and Jerry decide to re-visit a pizza parlour from their childhood, they learn two things: that there's still an arcade cabinet of Frogger, to which George has the top score, and that the parlour is closing soon, which would result in George's record being lost when the arcade is removed. I believe the episode happened at this time because it was in the middle of a re-surgence of popularity for Frogger- see the previous entry, wherein I briefly discuss a new onset of ports of the arcade game to several home consoles. Thus, it makes sense that the writers of Seinfeld would be aware of both Frogger itself, and the age of the game. Somewhat abridged clips of it are available here (youtube link, just over a minute long).

In "The Frogger", there are two main elements that contrast with each other: A) a surface (but still strong) appreciation for the game itself, and B) a lack of any technical understanding of arcade machines. The former is well shown by the scene with George attempting to traverse traffic with the arcade cabinet, while sounds from the game play over his movements. In a way, this critical scene is the only justification for the rest of the subplot, since it is a bit of a stretch. And, indeed, if the writers had accurately depicted arcade machines, we wouldn't have this great conclusion, and thus no payoff for seeing George fret so much about a high score.

I will present a list of significant points about the Frogger arcade machine in "The Frogger", in the order of my considering them:

1. It is true that the high scores will be erased when the machine loses power. This is one detail they got right. This would happen because the high scores are saved in volatile memory without SRAM (which is the use of a battery to keep the memory alive), meaning that the data is lost when power is lost to the machine.


2. However, it's highly improbable that the machine would never lose power (repair needs, crashing, power outage, etc) in all the years since George got his high score.


3. Assuming that it never lost power, while the arcade board could be powered by a large battery (such as a car battery), attaching the battery to the arcade board while it is running is both dangerous and dubious.


4. Let's say the battery manages to be attached, as what happens (off-screen) in the episode. The monitor is powered seperately than the arcade board, and requires a much higher voltage- thus, it would have been essentially impossible for Slippery Pete (the electrician George hired to install the battery) to wear out the battery by playing it, unless he could do so by only listening to the sound. Note that we never see the actual screen of Frogger while Pete plays it!



5. Let's get to George's score itself. His score of 860,630 was so absurdly high that not only have just a handful of people been able to surpass it, but also George would have been the world champion at the time- a fact that nobody in the episode remarks upon.


6. A more subtle point is that this score is too high to display properly on the high score screen! In Frogger, after reaching 100,000 points, the score wraps back around to 0. In addition, the high score display screen has been badly edited- it shows for some reason 10 high score positions instead of the normal 5, and all the scores below George's are the same three repeated, in random order, with only different initials.


7. However, ahead of all of this, is the simple fact that Frogger does not let player's record their initials, and thus George would never have been able to know that that score was his own. The space where player initials could go is taken up by listing the "1 ST" (first), "2 ND" (second), etc rank of players. Any possibility that the Frogger game known in the Seinfeld universe is the same as the one we know is immediately lost.

In Seinfeld, it seems that all arcade machines use a different technological development history than what we understand. Beyond that, it cannot be positioned that Frogger is an easier game here than it is in our world. If that was the case, George would almost certainly have not kept the high score for years- somebody else with just a bit more dedication would easily have surpassed him. We must then take it as a fact that George is not only a super-human at this game, but a humble one at that.

Rating: 2/5 ribbits

Information sources:

Written by Nikki of Spiral, with editing work by Decky Coss