Collection essentials #565: Ribbit King (GC)

Here’s a really quirky, unique, amusing game from the early 2000s that was never a household name. It’s pretty clear just from glancing at it that it’s one of those silly whimsical things that only Japan seems to produce. But aside from that, what exactly IS this game??

Well, if you can believe it…technically, this is a sports game. In Ribbit King, you play a fictional sport called “Frolf”. I’m not sure why they didn’t just make “Frolf” the title of the game! The name is a combination of the words “frog” and “golf.” Like in real golf, the game involves trying to get something into a hole. The “thing” this time is not a ball, but a live frog. Characters use a hammer to whack a contraption that launches a frog into the air. I suppose that’s better than directly whacking the frog…no amphibian abuse going on here!

The world of Ribbit King is an intergalactic one. The main story mode starts with our protagonist, Scooter, being urged by his king to obtain a very important resource called Super Ribbinite. In order to get it, he has to travel to other planets with his sentient basket friend Picwick and compete in games of Frolf in order to earn the Super Ribbinite his planet needs so badly. Different planets allowed the developers to get even weirder and more creative with their Frolf courses.

Unlike golf, the goal is technically not to clear the course in as few strokes as possible. Rather, your goal is to be the player who finishes with the most points. You can get a large amount of points from getting your frog in the hole, and you must do it at some point, but the more strokes it takes, the fewer points you’ll get. The thing is, the game’s courses are absolutely covered in “gimmicks” that your frog can interact with, most of which earn you more points. These gimmicks can be creatures that interact with your frog, water that the frog will automatically swim in, flies the frog will jump towards automatically to eat, things that will bounce and propel the frog into the air a second time, things that warp the frog to another part of the course, and plenty more. There is occasional input from the player requiring them to push a button, but for the most part the frog’s movement and interactions with the gimmicks is automatic once you take your initial shot. The more gimmicks a frog interacts with from a single stroke, the more points the player earns as they rack up a “combo”.

When playing multiplayer, players can pick which character they’d like to “Frolf” as, though from what I can tell the different characters don’t affect gameplay. What DOES affect gameplay are the frogs you can choose from, as some have special characteristics such as immunity to lava. Players can also bring up to five items that they can use during the match to give their frog an edge of some kind, and these items can be found and acquired in the middle of the course too at times. 

Ribbit King can make for a very fun multiplayer experience. When you and your friends launch your frogs, it seems like you can never be totally sure what exactly will happen, and it can be a hoot to watch it unfold together with friends. Up to four players can Frolf in any given match.

What are the flaws of Ribbit King? Well, as you can probably figure, it’s not really the game you’d want to play for a serious match to test your skill. Also, from my experience, while the gimmicks all over the courses can be fun and interesting, it seems that messing around with them is never the optimal strategy. Getting the frog in the hole as soon as possible always seems like the strategy that’ll get you the most points. I think it might have been more fun and intriguing if players could take a risk to potentially earn enough points using up a stroke simply to interact with gimmicks in an optimal way, but that’s just not really a thing; if the hole is within reach, that is always what you should be aiming for. Finally, the game has less content and modes than you’d see in golf video games like Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour on the GameCube.

I think I learned about Ribbit King when it first came out, probably from the pages of Nintendo Power, or maybe somewhere on the internet. I never gave it a lot of thought, though. I bought it online years later in 2015, and I don’t remember what prompted me to. But before very long, I played it with my friend Lucas on a couple occasions and we had lots of fun with it!

Ribbit King has never been rereleased. There’s always the possibility that it could be, but I don’t consider it a particularly likely candidate for such a thing due to its obscurity. Unfortunately, it fetches a pretty high price on the secondhand market nowadays. If you want to buy it, I’d suggest getting the PlayStation 2 version, which isn’t cheap but is considerably less pricey than its GameCube counterpart. The two versions have differences, and I’ve never played it on PS2, but I imagine it’s more or less the same experience.

As someone who enjoys both golf video games and weird Japanese stuff, this game is up my alley. While you’ll notice that most of the essentials I’m listing here are the well-known “heavy hitters” of their consoles, sometimes I want to have cool lesser-known games like this too. Ribbit King has managed to charm its way into its status as an essential in my GameCube library.