Frogger Pinball Preview

As anyone who’s ever played Metroid Prime Pinball on the Nintendo DS will tell you, combining popular mascots and pinball can sometimes lead to outstanding results. Konami is hoping they can strike similar gold with the upcoming Frogger Pinball for Facebook and iOS devices, the last of three new games celebrating Frogger’s 30th anniversary. But can Frogger Pinball wow us as well as Frogger Decades did?

Frogger Pinball hitting iOS and Facebook later this month

Taking the titular hero and squishing him up into a ball, players will bat Frogger around three different pinball tables representing different environments; Swamp, City, and Space (with the promise of more to come). It’s impossible to say if they’ve gotten the physics right until we go hands on, but after taking a look at the screenshots, we have some pretty high hopes for the table design.

Speaking of design, we’re a little surprised (and a lot delighted) to see that Frogger Pinball doesn’t feature the anthropomorphic Frogger character of recent years, but instead an honest-to-goodness frog. It’s a small touch, but seriously – a huge thumbs up to Konami for having no fear in tweaking the portrayal of a recognizable character.

The game will release in both a free and paid version on iOS, and a free version on Facebook. While the paid iOS version will have some extra bells and whistles – like a story mode that lets you play each table an unlimited number of times – both of these are being teased as “unlockable” in the free versions. Whether this is unlockable through the course of play or in-app purchases isn’t clear at this time.

Still – the free version will offer daily challenges that task you to complete specific goals. That in and of itself might be reason enough to return to the Lite version every day.

Table jockey’s with a taste for frogs legs won’t have too long to wait – Frogger Pinball is expected to debut by the end of the month.

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Jim Squires

Jim Squires is the Editor-in-Chief of Gamezebo. Everything you see passes his eyes first, so we like to think of him as "the gatekeeper of cool stuff." He likes good games, great writing, and just can't say no to a hamburger. Also, he is not a bear.