Miss Piggy's Wedding

Name:	Miss Piggy's Wedding
Company:	Atari
Model #:	CX-26113
Programmer:	Gary Shannon (Programmer) & Dave Joly (Graphics)
Year:	1983
Released?	No
Notes:	Based on the wedding scene from The Muppets Take Manhattan

The origin of Miss Piggy’s Wedding is a bit of a mystery.  Despite being coded in mid-1983 and scheduled for a Fall release, it appears to be based on the wedding scene finale of The Muppets Take Manhattan which wasn’t released until July of 1984.  However since Atari had a deal to produce games based on the Muppets, Gary (along with several other Atari programmers working on Muppet based games) were able to fly to New York to meeting with people from Henson Associates (HA!) and discuss game ideas based on the movie script.  Oddly enough Kermit doesn’t run away from the altar in the movie, but it wouldn’t be much of a game if he just stood there.

Miss Piggy's Wedding is a maze game in which one player controls Miss Piggy and the other player controls Kermit.  The story line says that Kermit has had second thoughts about marrying Miss Piggy (gee I don't know why), and so he's decided to make a run for it.  Miss Piggy will have none of this, and has decided to track down poor Kermit and force him to marry her.  Kermit must maneuver his way through the church and make his way to the cab waiting for him at the bottom of the screen (I guess he thought about this ahead of time).

While Kermit is wandering the maze, he'll encounter wedding guests (the blocks), which will attempt to block his path.  Kermit will also find a key that randomly moves through the maze, touching the key as Kermit will cause the entrances on the top and bottom of the screen to open (allowing Kermit to make his getaway) and touching the key as Miss Piggy will cause them to close (trapping poor Kermit in the church).  Gonzo (the minister) is present at the top of the screen, but doesn't seem to do anything in this version.

Unfortunately this is where the fun ends, because the rest of the game is unfinished.  Kermit can never escape the maze, and if Miss Piggy catches him with the church doors closed the game freezes.  Its obvious that there was still a lot of work to be done, such as the game endings (Kermit escaping or Miss Piggy catching Kermit), Gonzo's role in the game (he doesn't do anything yet), and some graphics work (the graphics are still very rough).  There are also a few glitches in this version such as Gonzo's graphics glitch when Miss Piggy or Kermit move to the right.

The first (and most playable) prototype for Miss Piggy’s Wedding didn’t surface until 1996.  Sometime later two much earlier prototypes were also released from an unknown source.  All work was stopped on Miss Piggy's wedding in late June of 1983 and programmer Gary Shannon moved onto the Aquaventure project.  So why was Miss Piggy's Wedding cancelled?  According to Gary:

"Miss Piggy just didn't pan out. Nobody seemed to be able to come up with a playable concept for the game. It was just a maze to run around in with routes that were pretty ugly and didn't resemble Miss Piggy or Kermit. We all tossed around different ideas, but nothing stuck. The 2600 just couldn't deliver on what Henson Associates (HA!) visualized. I think they wanted something more recognizably Muppets.  In the end I think everyone there was disappointed with what that technology could produce for them."

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