Xbox Live Arcade fans haven’t had a lot to enjoy this summer. Uno was the last game released on the service, and that was back during the start of E3 2006. Microsoft announced July 11, 2006 that this is the “Summer of Xbox Live Arcade.” What this means is that every week through mid-August 2006, a new Xbox Live Arcade game will be released. The first game released is an old school classic, Konami’s Frogger. Is it worth 400 Microsoft Points ($5 US)? The answer is maybe.

For the players not born when Frogger was the biggest thing to hit Chuck E. Cheese (that’s 1981), let’s give a bit of a refresher: you are a frog and you are trying to cross from a road to your home. There are 12 vertical “steps” required to get to your home. The first 5 are traffic cars, then there’s a middle ground and then you need to cross water.

The 5 lanes of traffic vary, but it’s a pretty easy pattern. As you progress to higher levels, the number of cars on the road increases and the speed of the cars increases as well. On the water, there are turtles that you have to land on as well as logs. Be careful though as the turtles can dive underwater. These frogs can’t go underwater, so you’ll lose a life if you go underneath with the turtles.

You only have 3 lives and an extra frog arrives at 20,000 points. Since you’re not getting huge points per level, you’ll be lucky to get that extra frog. This game starts off amazingly easy but when you hit level 3 there are beavers and snakes at the top (river) part of the game, making it very difficult.

In addition the 1981 collision detection still remains. What this means is that to land at your ‘home’ you have to be DEAD center on to win. If you are just a little off, you’ll die. The same thing happens between cars and on the river. It’s very, VERY frustrating – you’re wondering if the cars exhaust killed you or did one tiny bit of your frogs legs graze a car, rendering you dead. The same thing happened in the original, and since it’s been 25 years and it’s still annoying me, you can best believe it is not a good thing.

You can play the game with new "HD" graphics, or you can play it old school. Personally I prefer old school. One thing that Konami did change that you can’t go back to is the music, which is also annoying. I know my Frogger music and I look forward to that little 80s retro ditty; however it’s nowhere to be found in this game. I think I did hear a variation once, but in the original arcade game when you put your quarter in and hit start, there was a nice little intro, but it’s not here.

Another annoying thing about the game is the graphics. For some bizarre reason, Konami thought it would be a great idea to make the screen as tiny as possible and make it as difficult as possible to fix it. You have to pause the game (while in game) to adjust the screen size. While in single player it’s not a problem, but during an Xbox Live game, it’s very much a problem.

Yes, there is online play via Xbox live. There are traditional vs matches which are basically split screen and whoever has the best score wins…there’s also vs speed mode. The draw back with the online play is that it is lag-a-riffic. When it’s this laggy combined with the horrid collision detection, it makes playing the game online more of a chore than fun.

There are plenty of achievements and with any XBLA game the most you can score is 200 points. Most of the achievements are fun to get. However the 30,000 in coop live mode seems like it’ll take some time. Plenty of leaderboards are available and it’s always a nice challenge to beat your friends in the game.

Overall, if you liked the game in 1981, not much has changed. The XB Live modes are fun, and you could do worse for $5, but I say save your money for next Wednesday and see if that game is any better.