The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls

Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (カエルの為(ため)に鐘(かね)は鳴(な)る) is a Japanese-only Game Boy title published in 1992 by Nintendo and developed by Intelligent Systems. The title’s official English translation is “The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls”. For brevity, I’ll be using the title “Frog Game” in this article. After I finished Link’s Awakening, the Frog Game started popping up everywhere in my digital life. The first occurrence was without my knowledge: some of the characters in Link’s Awakening, Prince Richard and his frogs, are originally from the Frog Game and use the same sprites and music. Picture of my “Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru” Game Boy cartridge. While researching what game to play after Link’s Awakening I watched a video by AntDude detailing the history of hand-held Legend of Zelda games. The video starts by mentioning “Frog Game” instead of the actual first Zelda game on the Game Boy: Link’s Awakening. Very intriguing... After further research I stumbled across a project by Iván…