Oink!

Oink!

released on Oct 01, 1983

Oink!

released on Oct 01, 1983

Oink! is based on the fairy tale of the three little pigs. The big bad wolf is trying to blow down each of the pigs houses. You control each pig one at a time. The wolf is at the bottom of the screen and will blow a hole in the house one section at a time. Each time a hole is formed, the pig must patch it up quickly so the wolf can't get in. New materials are located at the top of the screen, and you need to grab them and place them in the holes as they are formed. The longer you last, the tougher the wolf will become! You start the game controlling the pig whose house is made of straw; when he is caught, you move on to the pig in the house made of sticks. Finally you will control the pig in the house made of bricks. When all three pigs have been caught by the wolf, the game is over.


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Neat idea for a game tbh. It's like a twist on breakout where there's your typical rows of bricks but instead of being the paddle under the brick row breaking the blocks with a ball, you are on the blocks side this time around and are trying to replenish the rows with blocks as the computer breaks through them from underneath. If a large enough hole is made that the computer can suck you out of your blocky fortress, then you lose. There's also a 2 player mode where one player gets to be the pig and the other player gets to be the wolf, but I haven't been able to try that mode out due to being a solitary gamer.

I get that they were going for a three little pigs theme by having the walls be made out of bricks plus each pig works as a way to give the player 3 lives, but it doesn't really look like Bigelow B. Wolf is actually blowing away bricks and sucking out the pigs as much as he's some sort of frog-wolf using his long tongue to eat the bricks and pigs.

The gameplay has the same frenetic energy as like having to put tracks over a constantly accelerating train to prevent it from crashing. The main way to stay alive and score well is just to keep pace with placing blocks right when the wolf destroys them, which is certainly easier said than done and eventually becomes impossible as you need to keep moving back to grab more bricks. I'd definitely suggest playing this on the B difficulty where you can drop the bricks from anywhere because on the A difficulty where you have to run up and down there's actually no hope of ever keeping pace with the wolf and you will die VERY quickly. I'd also suggest keeping an alternate controller like a genesis or looser aftermarket controller around because the constant erratic movement you gotta do does not mix well with the standard 2600 joystick. Supposedly if you can surpass 25000 points and send proof to Activision (supposedly on either difficulty, they don't really mention), you get to be an honorary Activision Oinker, complete with commemorative badge. I got around 45k points on my first attempt with B difficulty (A difficulty I died around like the 2k mark I think), so I better be an honorary Oinker, goddamnit. Microsoft better be using some of those 75 billion dollars to make more badges for people so help me god.

I guess this is best described as an early survival game where you must keep reinforcing the wall to prevent the bad wolf from getting in.