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Mega Man, Crash Bandicoot, And Gex - The '90s Inspirations Behind 'Frogun' - Nintendo Life

Mega Man, Crash Bandicoot, And Gex - The '90s Inspirations Behind 'Frogun' - Nintendo Life

Mega Man, Crash Bandicoot, And Gex - The '90s Inspirations Behind 'Frogun' - Nintendo Life
Aug 09, 2022 4 mins, 42 secs

Why is that '90s and 2000s fashion coming back as a new trend is so utterly distressing to those of us that were there, but '90s and '00s video game aesthetics resurfacing is a good thing.

We don't have answers for you, but we do have Frogun, a charmingly goofy action-platformer game that combines elements of pretty much every action-platformer between 1985 and 2005.

Whether you were a Banjo Kazooie gal, a Crash Bandicoot lad, or a connoisseur of Mega Mans, Frogun will no doubt grab you by the heartstrings and pull, thanks to its combination of low-poly art with pixel textures and its beepity-boopity 16-bit music!

We sat down (over email) with developer Molegato (Raúl Martínez Garrido) and producer Andy Andi Han to delve deeper into the inspirations (of which there are MANY) that Frogun managed to build on?

What were your main video game inspirations.

But the list is long, from modern games like Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker or Super Mario 3D World, to classics like Mega Man X?

All of them have mechanics or elements I wanted to add to Frogun!

Did you learn anything new about your favourite older games from making one yourself.

Level consistency is hard, and while some open games like Spyro the Dragon, Ape Escape or the earlier levels of Super Mario 64 tend to have open general-purpose areas, other games make use of every single tile!

Crash Bandicoot 4 is a very modern example, but going back to older ones like even the first Super Mario Bros you can see that every 4-block gap, or 2-block column, every small difference on placement counts, and affects where the character can move, jump, or use any action.

What's the hardest part of making a 3D platformer.

Retro-style games seem to go through cycles.

Frogun seems to sit in-between N64, PS1, and DS, PLUS it has frogs, making it VERY trendy!

Were you aware of this when you chose the art style for Frogun.

Do you think you always would have made it in this style?

So in a way, I chose that style just because I like it.

Before Frogun popped up, my main occupation was making low-poly commissions of all sorts.

And people seemed to like them, so I decided making Frogun in a similar style.

Plus, a very blocky game needs a blocky graphical style.

Which elements in Frogun are pulled directly from your childhood of gaming?

If you have a look round at the environments for those games, you’ll see influences pop up in Frogun, especially in the larger and more complex geometric levels.

Did the "frogun" name come first, or the frog...gun?

Do your parents get Frogun because it's based on older games.

My parents weren’t very fond of video games when I was a kid.

They've never really been interested in games as you can probably tell, and I doubt they'll probably ever seriously play Frogun.

What lessons can game developers learn from old games – and what do you think old games could learn from modern ones?

From old games we can learn a lot of things, like being truly innovative, and bold in the design.

From modern games, old games could learn about accessibility, clarity and streamlined controls and mechanics.

Instead, the goal was to encapsulate what we think of, when we imagine one of these games.

We think it’s retro, as the low-poly and low resolution are very different from nowadays trends and graphical capabilities?

You’d be surprised the amount of music from games like Donkey Kong Country, Mega Man X4, Super Mario RPG, and even more varied ones came up when searching for references?

The final soundtrack is an amalgam of different generations of video games.

How does it feel to have your game out on the modern versions of the N64 and PS1.

Do you think your next game will be in the same retro vein.

Just remember what the graphical difference is between Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII, or the style difference between Rayman 2 and, for example, Bugs Bunny Lost in Time.

Thank you to Andy Andi Han and Molegato for speaking with us, and for sharing their love of retro games.

There's also a patch coming within the next one to two weeks that aims to fix some common issues with the game, like the rival doing damage in races, inverted control and camera smoothing options, and adding more leeway to certain actions like chaining shots.

Let us know if you've given Frogun a go in the comments, and which retro game (we're counting anything made before 2005 as "retro", deal with it) you'd like to see games take inspiration from next.

Although Rare were legends at utilizing that blur in their games so I like how those games look.

Seems like indie devs like that aesthetic as well and im glad some are doing it.

Hopefully this games gameplay grabs my attention when I later buy it because im already in love with the style its inspired by.

Seems like every indie game is trying to sell it's self off references to beloved classics!

"But the Frogun is also cursed...."?

Love the nostalgic N64-PS1 blocky art style & aesthetic.

Hmm imo the game reminds me of ape escape, maybe it's the art style of the retro look of it

Review: Frogun - A Charming Platformer That Doesn't Croak Its N64 Inspirations

Review Frogun - A Charming Platformer That Doesn't Croak Its N64 Inspirations

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