Porky's

"Du Côté de Chez Porky--ou on trouvera un petit jeu amusant mais aussi un peu pénible"

Back when I was young I knew about Porky Pig(I preferred watching Droopy to be honest,) and my mother's imprecations against crude movies like Porky's caused me consternation. It was even more confusing than wondering what was so bad about XXX flour. Later, in middle school(a Christian one no less,) some friends showed me the Porky's Atari game. I took it home for a weekend and found it enjoyable if confusing. Later on a friend and I conspired to ruin his sister's tape of Porky's, which she allegedly watched too much. A Bible discussion show featuring puppets replaced it; however, it wasn't until my mid-twenties that I actually got around to renting the movie(took a 99 cent offer as well) and piecing everything together. Porky's is complex for an Atari game and remarkably faithful to the movie, with several pointlessly risky and amusing hijinks to perform.

Although due to the limitations of the Atari the game misses the camaraderie theme of the movie(a Porky's RPG would be interesting if they could pull it off) Pee-Wee, whom you control, stars, and the object is still to blow up Porky's. Although he is the same loser he was in the movie you can never officially lose the game--if you solve the game, you may wind up with a lower score, but that is all. Most of the game is about dodging around and, in fact, the only time you use the fire button is rather confusing. But there's actually thinking to do.

The opening scene of the game requires that you run across several lanes in a highway, and cars only figure in one of them. Until you get all the way across and construct the bomb, you'll be sent back here, but it gets easier each time until everything stands still. On that you need to pole-vault across a rather wide swamp to a ledge above; you can also pole-vault to the other side. There'll be flashing things you need to grab to build a ladder, which leads rather confusingly to the girls' shower room, another famous scene.

Ah yes...give me a castle in the sky, where ladies shower naked in the foyer! Well, just one, and it is Wendy, Pee-Wee's love interest in the movie. The object in the scene is to climb up to the top, push an object through the hole at the screen bottom so it falls in the swamp, and climb back up. The catch is that if you ever look at Wendy, Mrs. Balbricker will come after you. If you fail at this screen or the next(scaffold) you're sent back to earlier scenes. This one is rather well done as the implied nudity works is more palatable than in the infamous Beat 'em and Eat 'Em. The whole scene is rather funny.

Finally the scaffolding scene is a bit of a guessing game. You have a four by four grid of scaffolds and levels, and you must climb up to the top in the right order to solve the screen. If you make a mistake(a red/green arrow on the side alerts you) then you had better be careful falling back down to the bottom as Porky is waddling around below. However, if you make it through, the scene where Pee-Wee blows up the bar is really cool.

There are two different difficulty levels; one gets you more potential points, but Pee-Wee moves more slowly, and the swamp requires exact timing, so you'll have less fun and points at the end. Also climbing to the top of the scaffolding is absurdly easy in the first difficulty level. The scoring generally is nicely varied; sometimes a scene costs you points for each second you take or each time you run into a bad guy, but you gain points for advancing scenes(too proportionally much reward is given for crossing the highway the first time, though) or finding a bomb part.

Unfortunately each scene is dogged by one nagging control problem. In the highway scene, you can't see the top lane, where the fast cars are, so even if you make it up pretty far some of your success relies on luck. In the swamp, there's a timing issue picking up the pole that sends you to the opposite side or bounces you back if you don't find a precise time window. The shower room requires you to make an exact jump over a pit, and you have to remember which side of each scaffold spire to stand on to climb. Then to top it off, if you make it through each scene the first time, you still can't get the ''expert'' score of 8000 listed in the otherwise-entertaining manual. It requires you go through the scenes several times and get hit by the cars in the top lane of the highway, and luck will usually put you far out of reach of that anyway--this hampers the game's replay value.

However, the strong part of Porky's is the graphics. The game's ending, with animations and multi-colored flashes, is above Pitfall II and not too hard to reach. The highway has shocking yet clearly distinguishable color themes; the pigs are pink, as is another highway lane, and the Easter Island idol looking things near the top provide humor value. Although the swamp is a bit dull, the shower scene is considerably more entertaining, with Wendy(pink) washing in pink water. Mrs. Balbricker, all in white, looks like a fat zombie or a blurry version of those alien-shaped erasers from the eighties, and her legs kick as she climbs up the stairs--which she fails to touch, to boot. The stuff you have to push into the swamp is a different matter; what the heck is it doing in a locker room? You've got a big ol' globular cartoon bomb as well as what appears to be an animal skull you find in the desert or maybe the ActiVision game Stampede, with even a tuning fork and a wrench. The first time you play through the game you'll probably have to see all of these, which breaks the possible monotony nicely. Porky also seems to be a cross between Mr. Rush and Boss Hogg, with a bit of a Scooby-Doo walk thrown in. But Pee-Wee out-weirds Porky; his outfit(black cap, white shirt and jeans) is sensible enough, but when Pee-Wee jumps or falls his back is arched like some sort of crab.

Blips accompany Pee-Wee moving of his own volitions, but they break into several notes when he's flying or falling through the air. I'm a bit disappointed there is no winning tune but the noise when the bar busts down is rather flatulent, which is adequate.

If E.T. had been as spontaneous as Porky's it would have been the mega-hit Atari had hoped it would be. As separate games the two are really quite good, with Porky's maybe shading it due to the larger variety of scenes, some of the funniest graphics in any Atari game, and ease of understanding what to do in the game. Despite Pee-Wee often seeming as self-willed as in the movie(which I recommend even more highly,) it's still good for the occasional hoot.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/15/00, Updated 01/24/02