WHEN I KISSED THE LUCOZADE
The poor prince! As he courts his would-be princess on a meadow of green grass, smiling trees, and dancing flowers, a witch swoops in, kidnaps the girl, and turns him into a frog. Distraught, the frog-prince slumps down by a river and grabs a bottle drifting past. It’s Lucozade. He takes a sip and transforms into Superfrog: a green superhero with a cape and jumping skills to die for. The quest to rescue the princess is on.
Replaying Superfrog—a Team17 classic—for the first time since the ’90s was unexpectedly painful. My laptop died mid-session. While I can hardly blame a DOS-era Euro-platformer for that, the symptoms did suggest a crashed hard drive. Not exactly the smooth nostalgia trip I had planned.
Some frustrations can be laid at the game’s feet, however—specifically the PC conversion. My memory of the Amiga original is of a technically spotless experience: fast, fluid, and precise. The DOS version retains the speed, but introduces graphical glitches, clipping issues, and unreliable collision detection. On several occasions I had to quit out entirely after getting stuck inside walls. Worse still, content is missing. Eric Schwartz’s charming intro cinematic is gone, several enemy types are removed, and the short shmup-style level between worlds five and six has been cut altogether.
The influence of Sonic the Hedgehog is obvious, particularly in its obsession with speed. You rocket back and forth across levels, bouncing sky-high while hazards and enemies crowd every screen. As in Jazz Jackrabbit, this speed often works against you. The controls are sensitive enough that a minor overcorrection can send you straight into spikes, lava, or an unseen pit. I’ve never been fond of platformers that weaponize the player character’s defining strength against them.
Visually, the DOS port stays close to the original. The cartoon-inspired art is colorful and expressive, with enemies sporting oversized eyes and even background details—like the forest sun—tracking your movement. Allister Brimble’s music remains catchy, though some of the raw energy of the Amiga soundtrack is lost in translation.
I played using the keyboard, an imprecise but responsive setup that mostly held up. Each level tasks you with collecting a set number of golden coins before reaching the exit. There are six worlds with four levels apiece, spanning forests, castles, circuses, and other distinct settings. Each world is introduced by a short title card that frames your progress with just enough story flavor. Enemies are thematically appropriate and largely brain-dead, pacing back and forth or—later on—firing projectiles. The final boss fight against the witch, however, is genuinely atrocious: baffling, awkward, and almost comically bad. It really has to be seen to be believed.
I’m generally not a big fan of platformers, but Superfrog stands out thanks to its level design. Most stages follow a clear linear path, yet branch off into optional routes that reward exploration with extra lives or collectibles. Hidden tunnels in walls and floors often double as shortcuts past difficult sections. I found myself constantly brushing against surfaces, hunting for secrets.
Where the game truly shines is in its core challenge: frantic, momentum-heavy platforming built around massive jumps, verticality, and trampolines. Spikes are everywhere, and they’re the real menace, killing you instantly on contact. Thankfully, they’re usually telegraphed with warning signs or crosses nearby. I expected Team17 to be far crueler with their placement - for the most part it feels very fair.
Most power-ups are of limited use. The wings barely extend your jump on PC, the yo-yo-like green ball can only hit flying enemies and suffers from poor collision detection, and the invisibility pill—while granting invulnerability—makes platforming difficult since only your eyes remain visible. Bottles of Lucozade are by far the most useful, fully restoring health and extending the timer.
Between levels, you’re offered a slot machine mini-game where the top prize is the password for the next stage. Entering it lets you resume from that point—a welcome sense of permanent progress, not unlike reaching a bonfire in Dark Souls. Unfortunately, winning relies almost entirely on luck. You can earn up to fifteen tokens per stage based on performance, but getting the right combination—three Lucozades, a successful hi-lo gamble, or a ladder bet—has odds somewhere south of reasonable. It’s a neat idea that would’ve benefited from being skill-based rather than random.
Ultimately, Superfrog today is much as it was back then. The DOS port is a clear downgrade from the Amiga original, suffering from janky hitboxes, unreliable collisions, and missing content. Defeating enemies by jumping on them is riskier than it should be, requiring near-perfect positioning, and the spike hitboxes are downright unforgiving. These issues make the game harder in the wrong way—especially problematic in a platformer built around speed.
The Amiga version deserves three timeless stars. For this DOS release, I’m subtracting half a star due to its technical shortcomings and omissions. To be fair, the original really deserves a review of its own someday. At its core, Superfrog is a good game—and one that still deserves a positive place in my review index.
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