GoKawiilThe Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls Seth Larson @ 2026-04-30
Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (カエルの 為 ( ため ) に 鐘 ( かね ) は 鳴 ( な ) る) is a Japanese-only Game Boy title published in 1992 by Nintendo and developed by Intelligent Systems. The title’s official English translation is “The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls”. For brevity, I’ll be using the title “Frog Game” in this article. After I finished Link’s Awakening, the Frog Game started popping up everywhere in my digital life. The first occurrence was without my knowledge: some of the characters in Link’s Awakening, Prince Richard and his frogs, are originally from the Frog Game and use the same sprites and music.
Picture of my “Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru” Game Boy cartridge.
While researching what game to play after Link’s Awakening I watched a video by AntDude detailing the history of hand-held Legend of Zelda games. The video starts by mentioning “Frog Game” instead of the actual first Zelda game on the Game Boy: Link’s Awakening. Very intriguing...
After further research I stumbled across a project by Iván Delgado (Bluesky, YouTube) to create a colorization patch for “Frog Game” that appears to still be in progress. I was already a subscriber to Iván’s blog and had previously read their series of posts about colorizing Game Boy games.
Everything I read about the game made me want to play: the game was affordable, short (7 hours to beat), with a light and funny narrative, and had ties to some of my favorite games. I’ve since played Frog Game and I recommend the game as a quick and fun “pocket-sized” adventure.
Playing with English translations§
Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru was never released outside of Japan and despite multiple re-releases to the 3DS eShop and now Nintendo Classics, there is no official English translation. I can’t read Japanese, but to experience the dialogue. Luckily for me, there is a fan-created English translation patch from 2011. I would need the actual game ROM to apply the patch.
Japanese title screen for “Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru”
Title screen with the English translation patch applied
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