Homeward Bound: Odysseus, Frogger, and a Simple Teleology of Play

Getting a little retro today, so I'm thinking about games and stories from the 1980s and the 8th century. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that Frogger and The Odyssey are arttistically equivalent, but I do think that some of the thematic patterns underlying Frogger represent baby steps in our medium towards telling more thematically rich stories because it recognizes the need to map familiar motivations to a protagonist. In other words, the impetus was there in very early games to start telling great stories, and we've progressed a lot since 1981 (maybe less so since the 8th century).

Here's kind of what I mean:

Homeward Bound: Odysseus, Frogger, and a Simple Teleology of Play