Frogger: Ancient Shadow (partially found PC port of puzzle platformer; 2006)

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AncientShadowPC.png

PC Port's Title Screen

Status: Found

Date found: 16 Aug '20

Found by: Kneesnap, Flairieve

Frogger: Ancient Shadow is a 2005 puzzle platformer developed by Hudson Soft and published by Konami. The game was released 27 September 2005 on the Playstation 2, Xbox and Gamecube with a PC release coming out the following year. However, unlike prior PC releases in the franchise the game was not released on a physical disc but instead was offered as a download through a streaming service one could only access with the Konami Live Online Game Controller.

Lost PC Port

In August 2006, Konami released two versions of the Konami Live Online Game Controller, one being Frogger: Ancient Shadow and the other being the Konami Arcade Collection (which included re-releases of Time Pilot, Scramble, Ye Air Kung Fu and Contra). The controller itself used the same technology produced by QiGo and Oberon Media that powered another controller in a similar vein called NetJet.

With Frogger: Ancient Shadow, the controller would work as DRM and connect the user to the servers that were holding the game files. As you played the game, the servers would in turn stream and download the necessary files needed to progress as you went along. The servers for the Konami controller were discontinued in July 2012, rendering both games inaccessible, resulting in the PC port for Frogger: Ancient Shadow being lost with Konami never re-releasing it in any manner unlike the titles from the Arcade Collection.

On August 16th, 2020, two Discord users named Kneesnap and Flairieve were able to pull the files from the latter’s old hard drive, allowing them to preserve the game and reveal how the Konami Live Online Game Controller accessed the files necessary to run it.

Gallery

Commercial for the controller + showcases brief gameplay footage

Ancient Shadow gameplay

See Also

References