A Hopping Hand

One day during a car trip in 1981, Konami developer Akira Hashimoto was sitting in his car at a red light. He noticed a frog that was attempting to cross the road and reach the other side. It had difficulty, as other cars constantly passed by and kept it from crossing all the way over. So, Hashimoto stopped on the side of the road, went over and picked up the frog, took him to the other side of the road, and put it down. The act of kindness rewarded him with an idea for a brand new game.

Ponds Before Roads

When Hashimoto finished working on Frogger, he showed it to the executives of Konami, who then showed Gremlin. Gremlin was another arcade game publisher that was acquired by Konami's rival arcade game developer Sega in 1978. This partnership resulted in another frog-oriented game that year called Frogs. Gremlin cited this unsuccessful title, finding that Frogger would've been hard to sell because of the character being a frog.

Leaping Boundaries

A couple weeks later, Gremlin market researcher Elizabeth Falconer came across the game in their library of rejected titles. She insisted the game be given a chance, despite executives already turning it down for being too basic and cute. When the executives agreed under the condition she convince the executives of Sega's parent company Paramount that Frogger is enjoyable to play, Falconer was told it was only a game that "women and kids would play". But the executive never actually read Falconer's pamphlet!
It's worth noting that this was the target audience of Pac-Man, and despite its cute characters, turned out to be a massive success. Plus, when it was localized to the US, it was ignored at a convention in Chicago for the same reason! With this in mind, miffed, she criticized the executives for their hypocrisy, pointing this out. That actually caused them to cave and "let her have her goddamn kids game"! If it weren't for her last remark, this frog would've never spawned (heh).

Spankin' Good Times

The first location the game was tested at was a bar in San Diego called Spanky's Saloon in September 1981. While far from a family-oriented establishment that's frequented by a lot of adult men, many patrons went to give the game a go, and that's when Sega realized the game would be a hit. This was enough proof for the AMOA show in October for distributors to be interested in the game, so Sega released it all across the country. It would receive a bunch of ports, such as on the Atari 2600, 5200, and 7800.