Porky's (Atari 2600) Angry Video Game Nerd - Episode 130
(Day 9 of "12 Days of Shitsmas". The Nerd opens the 9th gift, to see "Porky's" on the Atari 2600. The Nerd is curious.)
The Nerd: This is Porky's on Atari 2600, based on the comedy film from the early 80's. It was one of the early examples of naughty comedies geared towards adults, and belongs in the same family of movies like Animal House and Caddyshack. Although not as classic and memorable as those, it has its place, and all of today's dumb comedies owe themselves to it. And likewise, all of today's weird, twisted, fucked-up shitty ass video games owe themselves to this! (The Nerd inserts "Porky's" in the Atari 2600 and turns it on) You wanna play shit? This is your grandfather's shit.
(The Nerd plays the game, and Pee-Wee goes down a street, gets hit, and goes to the pond. The Nerd is shocked.)
The Nerd: What happened?! (shrugs) Only on Atari.
(Pee Wee tries to get across, but can't, and the Nerd is confused.)
The Nerd: It's never a good sign when you don't know how to play the game. I've fallen into a trap. The walls are dead ends, and the water is pure death. To get out of this predicament, you have to use this pole to fling yourself onto the platforms. But that's not all. You need to collect these blinking things to build the ladders.
The Nerd: URRRGH! Fuck! FUUUUCK! Get up there! For a game console that has only one button, the controls are very specific. While holding the button down, you run into the pole, and then quickly release the button and tap it. If that tap is off in the slightest, you'll just swing to the other side of the pond. But if you do it at the exact microsecond, it will fling you up onto the platform. Alright, now let's build the ladder.
(It only adds one link and the Nerd is like "Are you serious?!")
The Nerd: It only adds one link at a time. So you have to wait for another blinky thing to appear, and keep repeating the whole process until the ladders are finished. There's no way around it. You have to master this pole. This isn't even the goal of the game; this is just to get out of the trap! Now up the ladder, and... there's a girl takin' a shower.
(The Nerd is shocked.)
The Nerd: There is a scene in the movie where the guys are spying on the locker room shower, but I did not expect them to include this scene in the game. Why is she showering in a room full of ladders anyway? The shower itself is suspended in mid-air. As soon as she's in your field of sight, she disappears, and a ghostly figure starts chasing you. Get away! I'm sorry, I'm not a sleazy sexual predator; I'm just a guy tryin' to escape the pond that's underneath your shower room!
The Nerd: These are some of the most awkward ladders in video game history. In most games, you go in front of the ladder, but here, you have to be on the side, and if you're not in a pixel-perfect spot, it doesn't work.
The Nerd: So the strange woman is chasing you everywhere. She glides through the air with such power that it causes the game to glitch, as if sending a ripple through space and time. What do I do with this thing? I tried dropping it on her head, doesn't work. Tried goin' up, doesn't work. I tried goin' down... really doesn't work. And if she catches you, it's back to the pond.
The Nerd: Believe it or not, this whole predicament in the locker room closely follows the movie.
The Nerd: The woman who's after you is the coach, Ms. Balbricker, who finds one of the boys putting his dick through a peephole in the shower. You'd think a scene like this would get ignored in a video game, but this is Atari, and sure enough, the manual says, "She's out to grab onto anything she can, so don't let her latch onto you." Yeah.
The Nerd: The character you're playing as is Pee-Wee. Not Pee-Wee Herman, but Pee-Wee from Porky's, which doesn't make sense anyway, because Pee-Wee's not the character who gets his dick grabbed. Not Pee-Wee Herman, h-he can grab his own dick, but... what are we talkin' about here?
The Nerd: I'll cut the shit. Here's what you do. Drop the items down the hole, the arrow appears, you go up the ladder to street level, where you play some sort of game of Frogger, on acid. What the Hell are these things? If you get hit by anything, it's - you guessed it - back to the pond. If you make it across the street it's another round of shower-girl-defender, Ms. Balbricker. Each time it's a new item, but the process is exactly the same. All these items are part of a master plan to blow up Porky's Bar.
The Nerd: I didn't think it had a rhyme or reason but it does. It just so happens you have to trek through a woman's locker room, that's all.
The Nerd: After you've gotten all the items, you progress to the worst part, the Mother of All Nightmares. Here, you have to climb up the scaffolding while avoiding Porky. Yeah, now we have Porky, too. Not Porky the Pig, but Porky from Porky's.
The Nerd: The scaffolding can only be climbed in certain places. It's basically like an invisible maze. One wrong move and you could fall all the way down, where Porky will most certainly get you almost every time. When you make it back to try again, the maze re-routes itself so it's always different. But as your reward, when you make it to the top, you get to blow up the bar.
The Nerd: What an experience Pee-Wee had. Can you imagine the story he has to tell?
The Nerd: "I was walkin' down the street, narrowly avoiding a speedboat, a submarine on wheels, a parade of naked Dr. Seuss characters, rabid pigs, dudes in cars, I fell down into a pond, where I swung around on a pole and built a ladder up into a girl's locker room shower where this weird blobby ghost tries to grab my dick, I dropped a bunch of pyro-equipment down the same hole that leads to the pond, but somehow ended up on top of a bunch of scaffolding where I went up and finished it all off with a BOOM!"
(The exploding sound effect is so loud, the Nerd is startled and jumps back a bit, dropping the Atari 2600 controller.)
The Nerd: And that's why you gotta love Atari.
(The Nerd reaches for the Day 10 gift.)