Frog Feast - The story of the first two years

       On August 20th, 2005 Frog Feast was unleashed on the unsuspecting public, courtesy of OlderGames. In the two years Frog Feast has been around, it's been released on 12 different console or arcade systems. Many of the supported systems are hard to find systems from Japan, or other uncommon machines not owned by many people. Frog Feast is the first release in many years on a number of these systems. In addition, demos have been released on four additional systems. Two of the four unreleased version are nearing completion, which will bring the number of releases to 14. The release of Frog Feast is a the realization of a goal set over 10 years ago; which is to support orphaned or abandoned game systems.

       In developing Frog Feast, I've had to overcome language barriers, locate or create compilers and, reverse engineer disk or rom formats. Frog Feast has been a two and a half year long learning experience about many 16/32 bit console and arcade systems. Frog Feast owes a huge debt of gratitude to emulator authors, and emulators such as MAME, MESS, Unz, BSnes, Fusion, CD-i Emulator, Project Tempest, WinUAE, NeoCD emulator, XM6 and, Hu-go! R.W. Bivins, from OlderGames, and John Pilkinton, from Chaos89.com, have been crucial to the success of Frog Feast. R.W. Bivins, and his company, have been the selling force for Frog Feast on CD based systems. Without John Pilkinton there would be no cartridge versions, including the upcoming Jaguar version. We also owe a great deal to the communities of the supported console systems (see some the quotes at the end of the page). So far, developing Frog Feast has been challenging and rewarding. It's amazing to see the excitement about a new release for these older systems! This is the reason we keep working on versions for additional systems.

       There are three more Frog Feast releases scheduled in the near future, and systems such as the 3DO, TG-16/PC Engine CD, PC-FX and, Dreamcast are being considered. It would be nice to release Frog Feast for systems such as the Playstation or Sega Saturn, but this cannot happen until there is a way play games on a retail unmodified console. The possibility of retiring Frog Feast has also been considered. But, letting go of Frog Feast is proving difficult. Frog Feast has a well tested code base, that begins working, on the target system, once a base set of functionality is created. The last couple of releases have began to specialize Frog Feast for a specific platform. This is probably the approach that will be used with a new game. Another possibility would be to use Frog Feast as a stepping stone onto a new system. The future of Frog Feast still holds a few releases, but we are beginning to look to the future. The future will depend on the work done on Frog Feast, and may involve Frog Feast. Either way, RasterSoft will continue to strive to bring games to classic systems. Thanks to all of you that have purchased one or more copies of Frog Feast!

For a detailed history of Frog Feast, visit the RasterSoft Blog.

Quote's from community members:

"I'm glad the Jag FrogFeast project is seeing renewed attention by Charles and happy it's not fallen by the wayside. Looking forward to the release and eating some flies as there's nothing to eat in the older version I have."
- ovalbugmann

"please keep up the good work buddy,put me down for two copies of this awesome release!!! i cant wait to purchase this game,WOOHOO!!!"
- BuddyBuddies

"I can't tell you how many people will be drooling over this... me included!"
- viMaster

"This is all fantastic stuff"
- Alan_Eng

"All right! I've just got mine and I'm going to open it!
This is a very special moment..."
- Omegalfa

"Charles, this is breathtaking! It works! Amazing how you manage to run this on CD-i."
- Bas

"Even consoles that were obscure and neglected in their own time, like the Neo Geo CD, get new life at CGE with new game releases like Frog Feast."
- Chris Kohler


Shelby (Broonale's son) is 'slightly' excited about getting Jaguar Frog Feast #5 for Christmas.