I think about Crazy Frog more than the average person should in 2023. More than any person should, really. Being in my late 20s and attending independent rave events means there is always a non-zero chance of hearing Axel F blasting through tall speakers as I drink red wine from a tumbler given to me by a friend who didn’t want to pay for drinks at the bar.
Sometimes, as I walk through my house, I hear my partner listening to it while he deadlifts in the basement. Last year, the Ukrainian government posted a video on Facebook of Russian tanks getting hit by Ukrainian strikes with Crazy Frog playing in the background. Crazy Frog is pervasive, is what I’m trying to say, especially when you consider that it was a phenomenon that peaked two decades ago.
Imagine my frustration when I was trying to have a nice dinner with my friends and inexplicably, against my wishes, Crazy Frog came up in conversation again. “Please, I don’t want to talk about this any more,” I groaned, but my pleas fell on deaf ears. I tried to tune out the voices around me as much as possible, but then someone said, “The video games were wild.” There were video games? Surely not. But then my friend explained to me that there were not one, but two Crazy Frog racer games made for the PlayStation 2 in the ‘00s. Thus began my descent into a rabbit hole I almost wish I’d never heard about.
The Crazy Frog games were, to put it gently, not well-received. Both games feature “The Annoying Thing”, Crazy Frog’s mascot, a terrifying blue biped creature with mismatched eyes, a mouth with either too many or too few teeth (I can’t bring myself to look at it long enough to decide), a sleeveless leather jacket, and a racing helmet with goggles. In some iterations, he also has a small penis, which is thankfully excluded from the game and most mainstream depictions.
The games are largely Mario Kart knock-offs, but worse. A review for the first game, released in 2005, called it “utter rubbish”. The review then specified that it’s not broken, necessarily, it’s just boring as hell. There’s little challenge, all the tracks look the same, it’s filled with random characters (some of which seem Mario-inspired), the handling is abysmal, and its jukebox mode is filled with Crazy Frog songs that nobody knows. Axel F only plays in menus, which is probably a good thing. It had a GameRankings aggregate review score of 28 percent.
And yet, against all odds, this bad, boring, pointless game ended up with a sequel. Crazy Frog Racer 2 was released in 2006, to equally bad reviews. The Official PlayStation 2 Magazine UK described it as follows: “Imagine playing a game designed by someone who really, really hates you.” Play.tm said, “Most truly awful videogames usually throw up some kind of content-related plus point to touch upon by way of light relief to the flow of dirge, but sadly the only content plus point evident in Crazy Frog Racer 2 is that there isn't much on offer and it’s all over so blessedly quickly.” PSM3 Magazine said they’d played worse, which is probably as positive as reviews get.
Regardless, people have a nostalgic affection for it. People who would buy a Crazy Frog racing game are unlikely to be seriously expecting anything good, and I guess it’s kind of a meme purchase in the years when memes were first becoming a thing. Attachment to this game is largely ironic – it’s hard to defend a game so bad, but you don’t have to defend it, you can just enjoy that it exists. Nostalgia has power, but I hope for the world’s sake, not enough to actually bring Crazy Frog back. Tricky, Crazy Frog’s 2021 single in 12 years, was originally supposed to launch alongside an NFT collection on Metabeats, but was delayed due to backlash. There’s also supposedly a new album in development, and as much as I enjoy Eurodance, I doubt Crazy Frog will have the versatility that led other ‘00s electronic artists like Skrillex to a modern revival. After all, Crazy Frog mostly does remixes, and I don’t want to hear “ding ding” alongside Ice Spice or Olivia Rodrigo. I can’t deal with yet another IP revival, especially if it’s this one. My brain might finally shut down for good.