How to play Porky’s online
- Move Pee Wee: arrow keys
- Jump, pole-vault, place a brick: Space bar
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Swamp difficulty: F9 (right difficulty switch)
- Gym difficulty: F4 (left difficulty switch)
- How aggressive Ms. Balbricker is: F2 (the TV type switch)
Gameplay
The goal is to blow up Porky’s bar while scoring as many points as you can. It is a one-player game made of four scenes.
- The county line. Pee Wee has to cross a busy highway, band by band, in the style of Frogger. Hazards include a motorboat, the police, attack pigs, Porky’s bouncers and the Pig Mobile. Each band scores more than the last, up to 3,200 points for the final one. If he is hit, he lands in the swamp.
- The swamp. To get out, Pee Wee pole-vaults across the water and carries four bricks to build an escape ladder. Each vault costs a few points, and an angry Porky is waiting. If you fall back in later, the ladder is still there.
- The school gym. Here Pee Wee climbs ladders and jumps between levels to push a brightly coloured object into a pit, while avoiding Ms. Balbricker, the stern gym teacher. Each object you push in stops or slows one band of the highway, which makes the crossing easier next time. Hanging around too long costs points.
- Porky’s bar. Once across, Pee Wee climbs a scaffold, planting dynamite along the way. Only one path works: an arrow on the left turns green on the right route and red on a wrong one, sending you back to the bottom. Reach the top and a detonator appears.
According to the manual, a very good run scores around 8,000 points. Setting both difficulty switches to A and the TV switch to black-and-white gives the expert level.
Tips
- Use the gym to your advantage. Every trip through the gym stops another highway band, so a hard crossing gets easier each time you come back.
- Vault carefully. Each vault costs 25 points and a fall into the swamp costs 100, so line up before you press the button.
- Don’t waste time in the gym. You lose 10 points for every 10 seconds you spend there.
History
In the early 1980s, 20th Century Fox published Atari 2600 games under the name Fox Video Games, including several based on its films. Porky’s was one of them. An Atari 8-bit computer version was published on cartridge by Romox.
Reviews were mixed. Writing in Video Games magazine in 1983, Dan Persons called it “tasteless” and “sophomoric” but still found it original and entertaining. Much later, in 2015, Yahoo Entertainment picked it as an example of a movie game that did not work.
