Xbox 360: Xbox Live Arcade starts expanding...Frogger 1st up

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Microsoft has started picking up the pace on the Xbox Live Arcade and for many it isn't coming a bit too soon. (There had been rounds of complaints lately that a person can only stand so many games of Uno before wanting to destroy the poor console).

First out of the shoot is the old Arcade classic Frogger. Get the poor frog across the busy street, then across the hustling stream/river area and into his home. Simple enough yet maddeningly frustrating as you play and things get more and more hectic (along with having more obstactles placed along the way).

Frogger has been udpated slightly for it's 25th anniversary. Newer graphics and updated music are featured on the Xbox Live Arcade version. I'm not that impressed by the changes and would actually have preferred that Microsoft and their partners would have stuck to the "classic" Frogger graphics and music. Admittedly, I haven't played with the options in the game yet, so I don't know if there are options to deliver the more classic images and music or not, but even if so, I wish it was the default.

For Xbox Live Arcade, Frogger offers up a multiplayer mode and the standard "achievements" that give you gamer points (used for comparison against other gamers only, not redeemable for any thing real or virtual). The multiplayer mode does a split screen pitting you against another player. I was easily distracted in my initial game as the split put my screen on the right and left me having to try to "ignore" the image on the left half of my screen. This may not affect others the same way, and again may be something controlled by options, but it was confusing for this lefthand writing, but righty batting player.

Frogger is a welcome addition to the Xbox Live Arcade experience, and certainly is priced reasonably low (purchase price 400 Xbox Live Marketplace points, approximately $5.00). It may, in some cases (as with myself), provide more playability and usefulness for significant others than it does for the primary Xbox 360 gamer, but that is just what Microsoft has been working towards. Get the whole family (or at least a large portion of it) involved in playing games on the Xbox and make the box as ubiquitous as possible.

The game is certainly not one that greatly taxes or strains the Xbox 360 hardware capabilities, though when playing multiplayer in my first such game I noticed some lagginess as I played. That could be a sign of connecting to a slow "host" user connection though, and not so much one indicating the game is stressing the hardware.

Folks that have a 360 and are looking for something inexpensive and fun to play on it can feel fairly safe in splurging on Frogger. Hopefully as other titles (reportedly scheduled for 1 game per week over the next several months) hit the arcade we'll get more fun stuff to play.

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By the way, if you happen to see Terpfan1980 online and playing Frogger in the Live Arcade, don't be surprised to not hear a male voice talking as you play. My wife may very well be monopolizing the console to play this one (one of her all-time favorites) and she's not normally one to be using the communicator headset while she plays.

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Another update here - you can definitely go back into the options and configure classic graphics

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