Ribbit King | DJcube

Did you Frolf today?

JP release: 11th July 2003
NA release: 8th June 2004
EU release: 3rd September 2004
Developer: Infinty Jamsworks
Publisher: Bandai
NGC Magazine Score: 45%
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

What’s Frolf? It’s a special kind of golf that uses frogs as the ball. While this may seem like a cheap way to make golf appealing to kids, I was surprised to find that there was a lot more to Rabbit King than I expected.

For starters, it has a very cute and adorable presentation with fully voiced FMV cutscenes. These feel like they’re straight out of a pre-existing kids show, yet it was all created for a game. On top of that, 30 short episodes were made for Japanese TV and then released on DVD. In America, these were included on a second disc (entirely in English) called Ribbit King Plus. Instead of just lazily throwing in a DVD to the game box, these are on an actual GameCube disc, making it the only TV show that can be watched on GameCube. Unfortunately, this wasn’t included in the European version which is a shame, as they’re enjoyable and silly.

As for the game itself, it isn’t just golf with frogs and has a lot more to it. It actually reminds me of Excite Truck: while coming first in the event does help, it’s more important to score points in different ways. Dotted around each course are lots of gimmicks: nets that bounce you further along, enemies that attack you but let you perform a quick time event to escape (and get points instead of losing them), flies that also give your frog energy, portals that teleport you elsewhere and so on.

Utilising these gimmicks will push your frog further and also score you points, and stringing together multiple gimmicks will increase the amount of points each is worth. There are also floating bubbles that give your points and the water itself isn’t a hazard either, as your frog swims forward until it reaches shore, getting you points along the way. A lot of gimmicks are used in different courses, but some have unique ones to discover.

For the main golf mechanics, there’s more focus on planning your move. On top of aiming, you can raise or lower the height of the shot, as well as add a large amount of curve to it. The target will show you exactly where the frog will land based on all of this, letting you aim precisely. There’s still a power bar which determines distance. When your frog lands, it will also hop forward, so you have to take this into account with your planning. You can pull off some crazy moves.

While there are only five courses (with four holes each), they’re all fully packed and require a lot of practice to make the best use of them. In the story mode, you’ll compete against different characters multiple times and reach fun cutscenes along the way, and you’ll unlock different frogs (with unique abilities) and be able to buy items to change how things work to make the best use of the course. It’s a great way of adapting a sport into a video game, rather than just being a video game about a sport.