[typing]
For many school kids,
dissecting frogs is as much of a rite of passage as acne, peer pressure,
and typing in 58,008 on a calculator.
But for the rest, there's Operation: Frog,
developed by John Mack and associates at Interactive Picture Systems
and published by Scholastic in 1984.
This is the Commodore 64 version here,
although it also saw releases on the Apple II,
since that was a commandment from the edutainment gods during the '80s.
This game was part of the Scholastic Skill Builders series
and came in this generic folder with only a couple stickers to differentiate it.
But the bland packaging is not why we're looking at Operation: Frog
because its legacy is far more fascinating.
As far as I can tell, this was the first game of its kind,
predating other games in the body-slicing genre,
such as The Software Toolworks' Life & Death.
As to why it came about, it only makes sense,
seeing as the physical practice of dissection is rife with complication.
Biology students are often required to wield a scalpel and forceps
and chop up their very own frog for class.
But of course, this requires frogs, equipment, clean up,
and tolerating the unforgettable aroma of formaldehyde.
As you might expect, some students might be adverse to this practice,
for reasons ranging from being squeamish
to just not wanting to cut up an animal.
This is exactly why the game was created in the first place,
but it's also what helped it to attain extra recognition in 1987.
A 15-year-old student in California named Jenifer Graham
refused to perform a dissection,
stating that she was against the practice,
and would rather learn using plastic models
and computer programs like Operation: Frog.
The school disagreed and lowered her grade significantly,
and once the media got wind of it, the story went viral
and the case went to court.
Jenifer even ended up starring alongside Operation: Frog
in an ad for Apple Computers,
which was promptly pulled after controversy from the on-going court case.
Eventually, this led to a CBS docudrama
and the 1988 Students' Rights Law in California,
and similar laws elsewhere, that require students be given an alternative
to dissecting real animals.
Inside the package, you get the game on a single 5¼-inch floppy disk,
as well as all the manual,
which details plenty of information on how to use the program,
the organs within a frog,
and worksheets for keeping track of your dissections
and on-going court cases with the State of California.
Operation: Frog begins with you picking up your machine gun,
loaded and ready to mow down dude after dude
while explosions go off and–
ah, crap, this is Operation: Wolf.
Sorry!
Wrong animal-themed operation for the Commodore 64.
Operation: FROG begins with the Scholastic logo,
as well as an intro animation showing the titular frog of operation.
He sits there on his lily pad,
eating bugs, swimming around happily,
oblivious to the fact that he's about to be murdered
and peeled like a grape in the name of science.
How dark is THAT?!
The next menu is even darker.
Like actually. 'Cause it has a black background.
And some white text asking you what you want to do.
We'll just go straight to the dissection, since that's the star of the show.
If you want to see me put a frog back together,
then just play this video in reverse, because really that's all it is.
And now it's time to peel back the skin
and perform some amphibian operations.
Well the game actually does that first bit for you,
since you're not actually given any t-pins or a scalpel.
You're provided with some scissors, a magnifying glass,
forceps and a probe.
The goal is to use these tools to take apart the frog,
lay all of its parts out to the tray on the right-hand side,
and identify everything.
The scissors allow you to snip each organ out of the frog's body cavity,
the magnifying glass tells you what it is,
the forceps allow you to move the organ,
and the probe lets you know where to do the cutting.
It's all surprisingly straightforward and intuitive,
and it works well with a keyboard or a joystick,
of which I'm using the latter here.
There's a little bit of a delay in moving the cursor around
and it can be a *little* iffy on selecting the actual items,
but it works!
Of course, it helps that your subject is already dead,
and you're not poking around the stomach of some poor guy
who just had gas, but instead you're removing his colon
and writing your name into his stomach.
Nope, unlike your frog friend here,
there's no need to be cold-blooded to play this.
It's just a simple task of taking everything out
and placing it on the tray.
The rest of the game consists of using the magnifying glass
to look up information about each organ.
Which is good, because otherwise you're just moving around
ambiguous pixelated blobs of red and blue.
Although sadly, every time you want to look something up,
you'll have to flip the disk over.
Physically, like take it out of the disk drive and put it back in on the other side.
So you may as well wait until the very end
to do any identification.
Unless you just really love manhandling floppy disks,
and I...I guess I wouldn't blame you, actually.
That makes sense to me!
As I said before, the only other thing to do here is to put the frog back together,
which is literally the exact same process, just in reverse,
and without the need for scissors.
Somehow, this puts the frog back together
and he just gets up and goes all "One Froggy Evening" on us.
Which I guess means that frogs have deceptively simple anatomy.
Or you just have godlike superpowers.
And that's all for Operation: Frog,
at least in regards to this particular 8-bit version.
There were rereleases over the years,
with more graphics and sound and gameplay options,
but you still got mostly the same thing.
It was a forerunner in the genre,
helped shape state law,
and lets you play God by bringing animals back from the dead!
I don't care who you are. That means that Operation: Frog is amazing
and you should play it forever.
And if you had a "hopping" good time watching this first video of Edutainment Month 2015,
then there's a lot more coming this month–
well, at least three more.
And a lot more in the past.
That's what I meant to say. There's a lot more in the past!
Go check out the playlist of Edutainment Month
or just click a couple of these here.
You can also interact with me on Twitter and Facebook
to talk about frogs and legislation.
And of course, you can support the show on Patreon,
which gets you some special perks like seeing videos earlier than anywhere else,
as well as just making LGR a better thing.
And as always, thank you very much for watching.