Frogger Fifth Ave. dodges real-time traffic
To mark the birthday of the '80s classic, advertising executive reprograms game to sync to crazy New York traffic in real time.
Frogger was a popular arcade game that had kids hooked in the 1980s. Now, with a little help from advertising creative director Tyler DeAngelo, the game takes on the world in real time.
DeAngelo used a Webcam to record traffic in real time on New York's busy Fifth Avenue. He wrote code that corresponded with the position of cars and turned it into live, streaming data. That means the frog in the game dodges cars as they make their way through New York traffic.
After the game was finished, it was installed in a real arcade cabinet. The game was then placed on the sidewalk along Fifth Avenue in New York and played in real time.
"This year is Frogger's 30(ish) birthday. To celebrate, I wanted to imagine what Frogger would be like if it was developed today," DeAngelo said on his Web site.
DeAngelo and his co-creators, Renee Lee and Ranjit Bhatnagar, ultimately hope to see their project featured in the "Art of Video Games" exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibit debuted on March 16 and features 80 games selected to "demonstrate the evolution of the medium."
Frogger was developed by Konami and released in 1981. The gameplay consists of a frog moving through an obstacle course, usually consisting of cars, logs, and alligators.
This story originally appeared on CBSNews.com.