Thylacin3

I wanted to take some time out of my day to gush about Porky’s appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2008. I’d say that Super Smash Bros. Brawl had a lot of interesting bosses that represented their home franchises. From Petey Piranha (Super Mario), Rayquaza (Pokemon), Porky (MOTHER), to both Ridley and Meta Ridley (Metroid). Porky stands out because he’s from a lesser-known franchise and still had a boss fight and a stage dedicated to him as New Pork City.

Porky serves a very minor role in the Subspace Emissary storyline, only appearing in The Ruined Zoo level when he’s trying to kill Lucas with his Pig King Statue. Some sources say that Porky was working for the Subspace Army, but I’ve always speculated that Porky wasn’t loyal to the Subspace Army (similar to Wario) and was off doing his own thing. He likely only sided with the Subspace Army out of cowardice, like he did with Giygas.

Anyways, during the Pig King Statue chase, Lucas tries everything to avoid being flattened by the hulking statue, but just like in its home appearance, nothing slows it down even after it falls into a lake. After Lucas gets his foot stuck under a branch, Ness appears out of nowhere and destroys the statue with PK Flash.

Quick side note, but I like how Ness can immediately recognize the statue as his old neighbor, and that seeing Ness again clearly pisses Porky off. Anyhow, after Ness destroys the Pig King Pig Statue with PK flash the real Porky emerges, ready to fight both his enemies from the past and future.

Right off the bat, can we acknowledge how absolutely terrifying Porky is in this boss fight? His bed mecha looks scary is far bigger than its original home appearance in Mother 3. His bed mecha’s appearance in 3D does a great job showing how much it resembles a demonic hospital bed. Then, adding to the creepiness is Porky himself, strapped in by a metal bar in the machine, lying nearly motionless. To the untrained eye, Porky looks like a kid like Ness and Lucas, but in reality he’s thousands of years old. You can see that his skin is purple and veiny, his hair is chalk-white, and he has a mustache from time travel abuse. Also, you can’t see his eyes at all; they’re completely hidden by his hair, making it seem like he’s eyeless.

To those unfamiliar with Porky, at first glance, he looks like a dying or dead child that’s being used to power the machine. However, on closer inspection, Porky is not actually completely motionless in his machine. He bobs his head up and down and uses his arms to point toward his mech’s jab attack. I remember reading a lot of comments on Porky’s theme song back in the day, talking about his boss fight. For many of them who weren’t familiar with the MOTHER franchise; he was the scariest boss in Brawl. Add in the grim and dreary atmosphere of the ruined zoo level compared to the colorful levels that appeared before, and you’re in for something eerie.

What makes his boss fight even creepier is that Porky’s completely silent. Many characters in the Subspace Emissary story are silent, only shouting attacks or taunts. However, Porky’s complete lack of speech remains unsettling. True, the same occurs for the final boss Tabuu, but I never really found him to be scary like Porky was. The only noises in his boss fight are from the mechanical bellows from his bed mecha and a creepy pitched-up Ultimate Chimera roar after his defeat. Personally, I’m still uncertain if that Ultimate Chimera noise came from his machine or Porky himself because of how inhuman he is at that point. Interestingly, Ness is vocal in this game, while Porky is silent. This is the opposite of their original dynamic in their home franchise.

Moving on, I want to talk about Porky’s moveset that is used during his boss fight. Porky has 7 moves, but each attack (barring one) is based on both of his boss fight appearances in Earthbound and Mother 3.

Starting out with his multi-jab attack, Porky can use his bed mecha’s sharp legs to tear into his enemies repeatedly to rack up a ton of damage.

Porky has a basic crab-walk move that allows him to move around a little bit to trample his enemies with his bed mecha.

Porky’s bed mecha can jump high into the air to crush its foes from above (this attack isn’t based on anything as far as I know).

His next attack is his bed mecha hopping slightly before suddenly charging forward at high speed to deal major knockback damage.

Another tricky move of Porky’s is when his bed mecha sends out Mecha Porkies from Mother 3. They run around harmlessly on the battlefield only to trip and generate a deadly explosion on unsuspecting enemies. If you look closely, you can see what appears to be tears coming from the Porky bots as they run around. It might just be a coincidence, but I like to see it as a nod to their mechanical crying in Mother 3.

His most devastating attack is his energy ray blast, where his bed mecha creates a ball of energy and fires a homing laser. His homing laser ability may be based on the “What did Porky do?!” move from Mother 3, where he attacks every party member at once, which this move resembles.

Lastly, his final and most interesting attack is when his bed mecha hovers into the air and unleashes a devastating red laser blast towards the ground. I like to think that this attack was based on his thunder tower, but I’ve seen other people make a greater observation. It greatly resembles Giygas’s UFOs laser strikes at the start of Earthbounds intro.

As you saw earlier, Porky’s defeat by Ness and Lucas ends with his mech short-circuiting after taking enough damage, flipping out, and blowing up violently. And while a lot of the other bosses like Petey Pirahana, Rayquaza, and Ridley (twice) had also exploded, Porky’s defeat was arguably worse. He got trapped under his machine and was likely impaled by the fence post in the background. For first-time players who didn’t know who Porky was, it looked like a child had exploded and been crushed under his own machine. I even recall some believing they were supposed to save Porky, similar to the first boss fight with Petey that had you save either Princess Peach or Zelda. That must’ve been traumatizing for those young players when the battle ended like that. For MOTHER fans playing this boss fight for the first time, I can’t imagine their initial reactions. It must’ve been a mix of shock and excitement for those fans who beat Porky for the first time in this game. Porky, in both of his appearances, evaded trouble by running away when he was losing and taunting you to rub salt into the wound. Here, however, he has nowhere to run and gets blown up and trapped under his own mech with no escape (sound familiar?). I can only imagine what Ness and Lucas were thinking upon defeating Porky. I’d really want to know Ness’s thoughts in particular, because he just watched his childhood next-door neighbor blow up.

The next interesting topic I want to discuss is “Porky’s Theme“ in his boss fight and why I think it fits the mood and atmosphere. I’ve seen some MOTHER fans who were disappointed that “His Highness Theme” (named Porky’s theme in Brawl) was chosen over “Master Porky’s Theme,” his final boss theme in Mother 3. And while I understand why they’d be disappointed, I think that “His Highness Theme” makes more sense thematically. “Master Porky’s Theme” is supposed to reflect all the horrible deeds that Porky’s committed over the course of the game, starting out bombastic before taking a more slow and somber tone to remind you of the pathetic lost child he really is. “His Highness Theme” however is bombastic from start to finish and definitely more of the type of theme you’d hear to pump you up for a fight. And I think its name being changed from “His Highness” to “Porky’s theme” in Brawl also makes sense because “His Highness theme” referred to Masked Man (and the rest of the army for that matter) representing Porky. Since Masked Man’s not in this game, Porky is representing himself and his own army because he’s the only one who believes in its evil and childish ideals

If you’ve made it this far in this analysis, I can’t thank you enough for sticking through to the end. Growing up, Super Smash Bros. Brawl was one of my favorite Super Smash Bros. games to play on the Wii back in the day. Sure, Brawl had its flaws, like the infamous tripping mechanic and slower gameplay, but as a non-competitive player, this never really bothered me. Aside from the regular stock matches, my favorite modes to play in this game were the Subspace Emissary story mode, All-Star mode, and Boss Rush mode. which you could only get by completing the story.

I found the Subspace Emissary tedious, particularly the Great Maze section. However, the character interaction cutscenes made the experience worthwhile. And that brings me to the two cutscenes that I remembered the most as a child: “The Pig King Statue Targets Lucas” and “Ness and Porky Face Off”. I knew nothing about the MOTHER franchise at that point, and just assumed that Ness and Lucas were like George and Harold from the Captain Underpants franchise. I figured they were two friends living in a normal town and got into hijinks fighting bad guys and the like.

However, after playing on both the Onett and New Pork City stages and realizing they came from the same universe, that really baffled me when I was younger. How can a normal and friendly-looking town and a giant futuristic polluted flying city be part of the same world? And my curiosity in the MOTHER series would only grow after playing the ruined zoo level for the Subspace Emissary story mode. Seeing two psychic kids fight a giant spider mech with another child inside really scratched at my brain. So it’s thanks to Porky’s boss battle and the MOTHER stages that led to me researching the series and subsequently becoming a MOTHER fan.

So, to make a long story short, it’s thanks to Porky’s boss fight that I’m a fan of the MOTHER series. It’s no surprise that also influenced why Porky’s my favorite MOTHER character. Someday I plan a deeper look into Porky’s role in his own series, though that may wait some duration. What can I say? I love going in-depth on subjects I like in great detail. Well, I think this thread has gone on long enough, so I bid you all farewell! As a certain pig boy would say: “Spankety, spankety, spankety!”

meet swinger! aka, chimera ness! i saw him in a dream and i had to make him real. he’s been taking over my life for the past few weeks. i don’t really know what to call this au.. blehh. this is kinda a thinkingcap au warninngghg

you can read all about him here, in this doc… there is missing info (and info will probably change) but i will make separate posts about it. for now just gnaw on this :)

the brainworms hit so hard… ouh