 If I told you that there existed a game called Power Pigs of the Dark Age, would you even believe me or would you think I was making it up? Well, believe it or not, this is yet another desperate attempt to create a playful cartoony group of anthropomorphic animals to capitalize on the success of Ninja Turtles, similar to Battletoads, Swatcats, Biker Mice from Mars, Street Sharks, Wild West Cowboys of Moomesa, The Adventures of the Gummy Bears, The Adventures of T-Rex, The Adventures of Don Coyote and Sancho Panda. I'm not kidding when I say this stuff was absolutely everywhere. I've made this joke a million times over the years, but man, I wish I could go back to this time as an adult, so I could start my own low-effort creatively bankrupt cartoon series like the mediocre Mallards of Manaus, or the liquored-up lemurs of Lincoln, Nebraska. This one was made in May of 1996 by Radical Entertainment, who would later go on to make games like Simpsons Hit and Run, and a couple of Crash Bandicoot games, but around this time, they were cranking out games like Wayne's World, Bebe's Kids, and Mario's Time Machine, some of the worst games of the era, and doubling down on the dread here is that this game was published by Titus, you know, the people who gave the green light to Superman 64, so yeah, the expectations for this game are rock bottom. It's an action platformer where you play as Bruno, a medieval pig who likes donuts. Seriously, it's like they picked three things out of a hat here, an industrial aged goose who likes toast, a mid-15th century French termite who likes the color blue. See, I can make crappy games too! You get a health meter with four lives and three continues to get through five long levels, and there is a password system here, and you wouldn't think one would be necessary for a game with five levels, but jeez does this game drag. Every level feels a hundred miles long, and what adds to the boredom is that your character can barely do anything. B jumps, Y attacks with a sword, press down in mid-air to butt-stomp, and press B while you're floating to jump higher. That's it. But hey, wait, at least there's a donut projectile you can pick up, and sometimes it follows enemies. That's good enough, right? Seriously, the manual for this game is four pages long. It's one of the most half-assed, thrown-together games I can ever remember playing. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's the worst game ever. It's pretty clear from watching even just five seconds of footage that the priority here was to make your character sprite super detailed and expressive, and to the game's credit, it does a nice job of doing just that. And not only that, this isn't one of those games where there's a split-second difference between pressing a button and watching your character actually do something because its animation is still going. The controls here are surprisingly responsive considering how much moving around your character is doing. But still, that's about the only nice thing I can say about this game. It's like if you ever thought to yourself, man, I'm Jones into playing some Earthworm Jim, I just wish it sucked more than, man, you are in luck. There is a story, barely, and sadly it has nothing to do with powerpig from US acres. Like I said, you play as Bruno and you have to rescue your two pig friends from the evil Wizard of Wolfe. Yes, that's right, they tried to 90sify the story of the three little pigs. In case you wanted more proof that this game was just farted out with zero effort, this story is told with one long-ass tech scroll. There is evidence here that points to this game potentially being broader in scope, like if you started out with all three of the pigs as playable characters and gave them all different abilities. But apparently this one was just pushed out the door, despite only being kinda sorta half finished. But hey, at least the developers had some fun. There's a password that unlocks this goofy fixed shooter game where you get to shoot people's faces. That's cool because it makes you feel like you're getting back at the people that made this piece of crap. So yeah, sometimes with older games, you're forced to ask the question, would anybody notice if this game never existed? And the answer is a definitive, no, nobody would ever notice. This game is so clearly thrown together in like five minutes. Seriously, I'm pretty sure ChatGPT could make a more interesting game. Is it spectacularly bad? No, but I kinda wish it was. It'd be more fun to talk about. Instead, it just kinda exists. I don't know, maybe games like this nowadays only exist to be a content creator's nightmare. Like, how am I supposed to make this interesting outside of coming up with really stupid cartoons like the sassy sailor snails of Sunderland? Well, this is gonna have to do. I know it goes without saying at this point, but I suppose I should reiterate, avoid this game. All right, I wanna thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.