Porky (SSBB)

Porky (, Porky/Pokey ), is an unplayable character in Brawl and only playable in Boss Battles via hacking. He has no specific voice actor, letting out mechanical bellows instead.

When playable, Porky's power level scales with difficulty. Uniquely, he is the only boss that can move independently, in this case with Crab Walk; however, it is a little unwieldy. Porky is also distinguished by his ability to summon Mecha-Porkies to control the field more effectively. This gives him an interesting bag of tricks, but without his Rush Attack, he has trouble closing out stocks. This makes him less polarising than most Brawl bosses, putting him firmly at the middle of the pack.

Attributes
Porky's standout trait is his Crab Walk, which unlike in regular Boss Battles, only uses the slow walk; additionally, it is hard to telegraph when he becomes actionable. This makes Porky a rather sluggish and clunky character, and, thus, it should not be used too often, even if contact does deal damage. Where Porky truly excels is in his stage control game, with the Mecha-Porkies and Plasma Attack forcing players to rapidly dodge many projectiles while forcing them to commit to intercept him at all. Finally, his HP is high on boss standards — compounded with a resistance to projectiles — which gives him some ability to outlast repeated onslaughts and react in turn. This forms a playstyle not seen in many Smash characters, only remotely being matched by. It is notable that Plasma Attack, Jump Press, and Energy Ray all track opponents correctly under human control, which is a privilege few Brawl bosses can claim.

Porky loses his Rush Attack when playable, forcing him to find alternative ways of closing out stocks; these include the Thrust Attack, Jump Press, and Energy Ray. Thrust Attack deals large amounts of damage and is hard to telegraph after a Crab Walk, but can be SDIed by an experienced player, and Jump Press is slow and easy to avoid, especially if a player gets on top of Porky, but has the highest KO power. The Energy Ray is arguably the most effective as a result, which uniquely defends Porky from players climbing on top of his capsule, with the energy ball KOing extremely early.

However, Porky does have some crucial flaws, even outside of his difficulty landing KOs. The Crab Walk's lack of actionability makes it very difficult to utilise, sometimes leaving him vulnerable to players jumping on his capsule. From there, Porky is exceptionally vulnerable to attacks like down smashes, which can rapidly deplete his HP. Jump Press and Plasma Attack can be exploited with this in mind — albeit with caution in the latter case, once Porky is about to loose a beam — leaving him vulnerable to further heavy hits. He can, however, counterplay this with Energy Ray and Mecha-Porkies, as well as not tunnelling into constantly using the Crab Walk.

Moveset
Like all bosses, Porky's moves are inputted using a set of commands with a GameCube controller, chiefly with the D-Pad. Move names are taken from the Japanese strategy guide for Brawl. Damage varies by difficulty, the following being taken from the game's files. 's Grapple Beam restores AI control. Unlike its boss appearance, Porky cannot use his Rush Attack.

Codes
Like all Brawl bosses, Porky can be accessed using a Gecko code that enables debug mode controls for Player 3 in Boss Battles. He is encountered randomly without additional external modifications, meaning other bosses need to be defeated or forced to self-destruct with their own codes to reach Petey Piranha's stage. The following codes are for the NTSC-U version of Brawl and both codes must be on.

In competitive play
Because Porky is only playable through hacking, he's banned by default in all competitive Brawl tournaments. While some boss characters have arguments to be legalised, Brawl's bosses have unique challenges that make them particularly unlikely cases. They do not conform to the usual ruleset, are exclusive to Boss Battles and thus their specific stage, are subject to Boss Battles's random boss selection without further modifications, and have varying difficulty levels that would require rulings to decide on them properly. This boils down to a very clunky experience that would likely end up delaying tournaments due to the length of time it takes for them to be set up. Furthermore, 's Grapple Beam can reset the controls of Brawl bosses, which could cause further ruling issues. Ergo, Porky has seen little to no competitive experimentation outside of casual matches.

In The Subspace Emissary
Porky appears as the third boss in The Subspace Emissary after the Pig King Statue is defeated in The Ruined Zoo. He is defeated by and  before the latter is turned into a trophy and stolen by. After this event, Lucas is joined by.