Space Station Silicon Valley (N64)

Developer:

DMA Design

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Release Date:

1998

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Systems:

Nintendo 64, PlayStation

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This week on Super Adventures I'm playing Spacestation Silicon Valley! Or Space Station: Silicon Valley, as it's written in the manual. The PlayStation version claims that it's called Evo's Space Adventures but I think it's lying.

The first thing I've noticed about the game is that there's an inflatable spaceship on the title screen, not a space station, and I don't appreciate this blatant attempt to mislead me. Plus it keeps orbiting the letters and I couldn't decide on the best time to take the screenshot. I tried to catch it in good place but I'm not sure I managed it.

I feel like I should pad this intro out with some interesting trivia taken straight from Wikipedia, so here's a couple of Space Station Silicon Valley facts for you:

First, the game's by Scottish developers DMA Design (now called Rockstar North), who are famous for the Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto series. In fact a lot of the people who worked on the game went on to create Grand Theft Auto III and kick off the 3D sandbox mayhem genre, so I guess it was a good thing this didn't sell enough to get a sequel. We could've ended up in the bad even worse timeline where we didn't get Sleeping Dogs, The Saboteur or Saints Row.

Second, it's no surprise it didn't sell well considering it came out in 1998: The Year of Good Games. Sure the N64 didn't get ports of Resident Evil 2, Unreal, Half-Life, Thief, Baldur's Gate, Fallout 2, Pokémon Red/Blue, Starcraft, Grim Fandango, Sonic Adventure, Metal Gear Solid etc. that year, but Nintendo fans did have Banjo-Kazooie, Body Harvest, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Turok 2 and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time competing for their pennies (and Nintendo's marketing budget).

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The game begins with the DMA Design logo guy getting mauled by a pack of vicious cuddly dogs. Last time I saw him it was in the original GTA where he got run over by a car, so I'm not surprised he eventually left the company, which then forced them to change their name to Rockstar North.

Then there's a newsflash and a TV news anchor appears to tell us that Space Station Silicon Valley is back after 1,000 years lost in space.

Silicon Valley features the popular 'floating bicycle wheel' type of space station design seen in movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Elysium, the Elite games and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Though that fluorescent green and magenta paint job is something all its own. I wondered for a moment why the hell they thought those colours were a good idea, but then then I remembered it's from the 90s.

I've noticed that a lot of wheel-shaped stations in sci-fi rotate even though they have artificial gravity, I guess because it gives everyone a chance at seeing some sunlight and because round things look cooler when they spin. But this looks like it actually has its landscape wrapped around the inside of the torus, which implies that uses centrifugal force to... wait, what was I talking about? Oh right, game intro.

Professor Cheese and a platoon of space marines were sent over but are feared dead after their last transmission. Next time they send a professor to lead their special forces team they should probably go with a more action hero type, like Indiana Jones or Daniel Jackson.

Though I liked the way the generic news theme smoothly transitioned into Chopin's Funeral March for a moment. That's the future of news reporting right there. It also seems to play a few notes of the Star-Spangled Banner when the subject switches to World President Mrs Frank Bloke.

Oh, wow... there's a joke you wouldn't see in a Nintendo game in 2019. Or anywhere really, outside of an old Monty Python sketch maybe.

President Bloke has decided that when the smartest and the toughest have failed it's time to send in whoever's left, and in this case that's the Heroes for Hire. It's a surprise Marvel crossover!

Well they got Iron Fist's collar right, but I can't help but notice that Luke Cage is a robot.

Actually these two are Dan Danger and Evo, just like it said on that screenshot earlier, and the fate of the world is now in their hands! And that's the end of the news.

Wait, you forgot to tell us what the actual threat is! Why is the world in danger? Is Silicon Valley going to collide with the Earth? Is the station locking a giant super weapon on us? Are we assuming this is an alien invasion?

Also is Silicon Valley a reference to the Valley Forge, the ship in the movie Silent Running? That just occurred to me now.

Anyway the game gave me a choice of four slots to save my game, and if I ever get bored of saving in the same place each time it has an option to copy my save to another slot! Always nice to be able to make a backup, especially when it's so easy to accidentally select 'delete' instead.

Now I'm at the second half of the intro, which is all real time 3D this time. It starts with Dan taking a wrong turn in his shiny untextured rocket ship and having to slowly back up, but the two space heroes are soon fighting over the radio. Evo's sick of of Dan's taste in music and tries changing it to something else, but he gets a few smacks around the back of the head to discourage him from touching the radio again.

Game Boy Color

The Game Boy Color port does a surprisingly good job of adapting the scene for its tiny 2D handheld display. Though Dan looks a bit more like a Muppet in this version and they got his colours backwards. Also there's no voices, but then there's no speech in the N64 game either really, just speech-like noises that take up far less room on the cart.

I should check out the PlayStation port as well, see how faithful that ended up.

PlayStation

Oh man. What the hell went wrong? I guess Evo's supposed to be dancing but he looks more like he's writhing in pain.

And why change the name anyway? I mean I can always respect developers choosing to include the word 'Adventures' in their title, but the original title was fine! Was it a request from DMA Design to make sure the game would never be mistaken for anything they had anything to do with?

PlayStation

The intro kind of looks the same in the PlayStation game despite being pre-rendered video this time, but they're really going off script. Here the argument is a lot more civil, with Evo suggesting heavy metal and playing a bit of air guitar, and Dan sensibly puts the insults on pause to warn his buddy about the incoming meteor shower.

In the original game Evo just knocks the asshole out cold with one punch. I love how pleased with himself he is afterwards.

Unfortunately he didn't stop to think about who's going to steer the ship with the pilot KO'd. Plus he was too distracted to notice that they're flying towards an asteroid. Thankfully the ship survives the collision, though now it's on a collision course with Silicon Valley. All Evo can do about it is freak out and await his doom... giving the allegedly unconscious Dan a chance to sneakily change the music back.

Meanwhile, down on space station Silicon Valley, Roger the dog and Flossy the sheep have met at a speaker to proclaim their love. Roger hops off in a daze, blissfully unaware that a spaceship is about to smash through the window and crush him. Man this is a cruel game.

Fortunately it turns out that Roger is a robot dog. I mean it's doesn't help him out any, he's well and truly dead, but it's very handy for Evo, who ends up scattered in pieces when his ejector seat finally activates and slams him into the ceiling. Turns out that Evo's main processor chip can walk around on its spiky metal legs and it rushes over to use Roger's convenient wreckage as a new body. I guess all the dog really needed was a new CPU and it's back on its feet.

And that's the end of the intro; it doesn't dwell on the tragedy of Roger and Flossy's doomed love. The PlayStation version does though, as Evo mocks the poor sheep then jumps back out of its new body as a chip just so he can laugh at her standing next to Roger's lifeless corpse.

Seriously, I'm not joking, this is exactly what happens.

I like N64 Evo way better.

Okay I've finally reached gameplay and I've got my first mission. Hang on, is that Comic Sans?

I need to get some energy from somewhere and then I need to murder a sheep and possess its body. Like poor Flossy hasn't suffered enough already!

Wow, that was easy. The energy was right next to me when I started, I just had to tilt the analogue stick for a second or two. Though I'm not sure if the energy sphere I found is the same thing as the purple power cells the briefing told me to collect. There's another kind of orb over there and that looks pretty purple.

In fact I think I can see some behind that waterfall as well, though I'm not sure I want to risk jumping into water as a robot dog. Then again, it's the start of the game; it's not like I'll lose anything if he explodes. Unless I have finite lives.

Turns out that Evo can survive in water! With the orbs from behind the waterfall in my possession I now have 4 of 15 purple power cells on this stage. Shouldn't be hard to find the other 11, this level is tiny.

Oh that's a cool effect. I mean the way the cockpit window turned transparent when I got close, letting me see Dan sitting inside, not the way he just put his music through to every speaker in the bloody level. He'd better hope I don't find a way inside so I can bite him.

Though I should be looking for a sheep to bite really, seeing as that's my last objective.

Game Boy Color

Man, this is messed up, chasing after Flossy in the body of her deceased love. I suppose it has to be done though, to save the Earth... even though they still haven't told me why the Earth is in danger.

Oh this is the Game Boy Color version by the way. They've reimagined the gameplay in 2D instead of trying to get a 3D engine working on a machine only just powerful enough to run Tetris, so really it's not the same game anymore and I should probably stop showing screenshots of it.

Okay, Flossy's dead (or maybe it's her identical sister, there's a couple of sheep here), and I've sent Evo out of Roger to commandeer the broken robot shell and complete my final objective.

You'd think that the deactivated sheep would start with low health, but it's Evo's CPU condition that matters, so I keep the same health whenever he jumps across bodies. Though if I park too far away from a replacement body and have to walk he'll lose health along the way because exposure to the elements damages his chip over time.

By the way if you're wondering about the fuzziness of the animals and the black marks around the edge of the screen, that's exactly how the game looks on my TV with an actual N64 plugged in. It probably disappears into the overscan on an old CRT though.

Hey, I got a screen full of sheep facts! There's one thing I don't get though... why is the background full of genetic code and DNA if these are robot animals?

Anyway the sheep can't bite things, but it gets floaty jumps instead, so I'm going to hop over to the exit teleporter that's just activated and move onto stage 2.

ZONE 1, LEVEL 2: HAVE A NICE DAY!

I've got two objectives for this level: get FOUR sheep into a pen and find a mouse with wheels. Oh plus I've got another 15 purple power orbs to find.

I expected herding these sheep would be a nightmare, especially when I discovered that they can use the blue switch to turn the energy fence on and off themselves, but they're going exactly where I want them with zero messing around. They're not even smart enough to jump over the fence and break their friends out!

The only problem I'm having is that I need four sheep and I can only find three.

It's great that the draw distance is big enough to display the entire level with no fog, something you can't take for granted with N64 games, but the 3D objects turn into flat sprites when they get far enough away so I can't make them out at a distance.

I'm not going to be able to jump between those islands to get the power orbs as the dog so I guess I'll have to nick a sheep for its floaty jump ability once they're all in the pen and I've got the objective complete.

ONE SHEEP LATER

PlayStation

Floaty jumps are working out pretty well for me. In fact these sheep can float for ages, so getting across the islands will be no problem, now that I've managed to get the camera lined up the right way at least. It's not always very cooperative.

If you're wondering why everything suddenly looks a lot sharper and the world is disappearing into a black void, that's because this is the PlayStation version of the game. I was expecting them to have reworked the levels and made a mess of it, but it seems to be basically the same thing, just slower and uglier. Plus there's different music, but I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not.

Hey the camera's playing nice for once and has given me a decent angle so I can do my jumping!

Bit of a platforming challenge here, as I have to leap from floating island to floating island to get to a purple power orb. Then the islands float up higher and I have to do it again the other way around to collect some more. I'm having more luck with it than I expected, though in retrospect I should've brought the floaty sheep.

Actually what I should've done is killed the other robot dog first, because when I came back over with my sheep he just ran up and bit it to death! It was such a tragic fuck up that it even had Dan crying in his cockpit afterwards. Fortunately I could just restart the stage and all I lost was my progress and my score.

It's fine, I know what I'm doing now so I'll be able to fly through the sheep herding part. Then I'll just need to find the mouse with wheels and I'll be done here.

ZONE 1, LEVEL 3: HONEYMOON LAGOON

I found the lil mouse with wheels in the end and they let me keep him for the next stage this time instead of starting me off with the dog again. The mouse can't bite or float but it does have NOS, for when I need a sudden boost of speed. Though I don't think it'll be enough to jump that electric fence over there.

My objectives on this level are to deactivate the Big Machine, deactivate that fence and get something soft and fluffy, so it's a little bit more of a puzzle than last time.

Aha, I've spotted the fluffy things, over there on the other side of that ramp. Trouble is that this is a one-way ramp to a mouse that can't jump, so I can't get over there. I don't think I can get back to the start either, as I used a ramp to leap over a stream to get here and unlike the other animals so far, the mouse isn't waterproof. Fortunately I've done nothing and got zero score so I'll lose absolutely nothing this time by restarting the level, and it's a cartridge game so I won't even need to wait for it to load.

I like being able to switch to this camera angle by the way; it's very handy for when I need to line up a jump because the automatic camera is not to be trusted and will sabotage me every time.

Right, this must be the Big Machine. I think I can see what I need to do here: drive over all the floor switches quickly enough to get them all activated before any of them turn back off... without driving off the edge of this raised metal platform.

And the first thing I do is drive off the edge! Now I need to get back up here with the ramp again. I'm really starting to lose my patience with the camera and all these ramps right about now.

Hitting the four levers in the middle sorted out the machine and driving over all the switches around the outside deactivated the fence, so I'm making progress!

I also jumped through a ring, not that it seemed to do anything. I guess if I get them all I win a prize maybe? It didn't make my score go up.

With the electric fence disabled I was able to drive through to the next area, dodging some robot foxes with a craving for mouse wheels, and found a pool of water with tall pillars sticking out of it, one of them with the exit teleporter on it. No way I'll be able to jump between them with a mouse that can't jump, but I bet I can get to those soft fluffy sheep now.

Actually I found something even better than sheep: a sheep on a spring! Also some really weird looking trees. They're strange and I don't like them.

The sheep on a spring isn't as good for jumping pillars as you'd expect, but it's good for getting revenge on foxes. These foxes have a dash-forward move which could've been just what I need to get across the pillars, except they won't dash off edges, so they're pointless. Plus their power recharge seems really slow compared to the other creatures, taking six seconds or more.

Oh fine I'll just go get a regular sheep and float over the pillars to the exit.

ZONE 1, LEVEL 4: THE BATTERY FARM

I've found a dog with mounted missile launchers! I couldn't get a good screenshot of him shooting any of them at me, annoyingly, but I definitely got hit by enough of them. I had to run back to an earlier part of the level and smash some boxes for health orbs. Well, walk back; most of these animals aren't all that fast.

But this ain't a harmless sheep I've got here this time, this is a ram, so I'm going to go over there, headbutt him, and hijack a rocket dog! I'm also going to use that dangerous looking hay lift machine in that barn to get a ride to the upper level and go looking for purple orbs.

Oh, turns out that the dog can't jump, so I have to slowly make my way back the earlier part of the level again and exchange it for a sheep. It's fine though, as it'll give me a chance to destroy all the speakers I passed along the way with concentrated rocket fire and earn myself a respite from Dan's music.

12,600 POINTS LATER

It always takes me forever to find the last few orbs, but I get there in the end. I can also see a way to reach a switch from here, if I jump off the dog house onto the house roof, then float from there onto the grassy ledge to the left, and so on.

Getting around is a little bit of a puzzle, especially as I need to pick the right animal for the job, but the levels are small enough so that I can generally see everything I need. Though they're big enough for backtracking to swap robots to be a pain.

Hey that's new, they've given me a choice of levels this time. I can carry on playing through the Europe Zone or jump over to the Ice Zone for a bit.

Looks like there's 30 levels in total, so I'm 13% through now.

ZONE 2, LEVEL 1: SNOW JOKE

There's a nice demonstration of the draw distance. I like this place, it's actually fairly high in friction for a slippery slidey ice world, with only one icy slide for me to slip down. Though that became a problem when I fell off the cliff and found I couldn't walk back up it. Well I didn't fall off exactly, I used my penguin's power to pelt a husky with snowballs and he died so close to the edge that when I jumped over to steal his body he toppled over.

I keep waiting for a plot to kick in but it just hasn't. I'm just told to do stuff, so I do it. Like on this level I was told to activate a machine so I went over and did it... and it turned out the lights. Turned out I'd gotten the wrong machine, but turning out the lights did make a mysterious moving platform appear. So I took a ride on it to reach a golden L-block! Or something. Maybe it was one of the trophies I've heard about but never seen myself.

I love the reflection in the windows and the way the rumble of the space station's machinery gets louder when you get close to the outer hull.

I don't love how I accidentally jumped outside of the level and I'm stuck here now. I was just searching for the last few purple power orbs, that's all I wanted! Now I've got to restart the level and lose all my progress, including my shiny L-block.

You know what the worst part of this is? I actually had all of the power orbs already, I just assumed I had a bunch more to collect and I didn't bother to check.

ZONE 1, LEVEL 5: THE ENGINE ROOM

There's some nice purple corridors in this place, but man pushing this mysterious block I found is so slow. I'd try switching to the bear I just killed but backtracking to find him then coming back here would be so slow. Though I am going stop for a moment blow up that computer over there with my dog missiles to collect the delicious power orb within.

I've also found a rat that's good for laying timed mines and sneaking into mouse holes, but I've forgotten where I left him too. I'm really starting to wish that I had had a map, so I could see the layout of this place and where all my animals are.

Damn, after all that work pushing the mysterious block to the mysterious block-shaped floor panel with red lines coming out of it the bloody thing doesn't want to go in! I'm actually stuck now, I've got no idea what else I can do.

Oh never mind, turns out bears can pick stuff up so the block has now been placed. The panel activated a floating platform with an actual live scientist on it! Man, the things he could tell us about what happened here during the thousand years the station was missing... like how he's still alive a thousand years later. But he ain't saying nothing. He did give me a keycard though; I guess when a bear wants something from you, you don't argue (or say anything at all).

The camera flew off to show me where to take the card, which was nice. It also showed me that there's two bears guarding the exit so I should probably bring the missile dog for his long-range attack capabilities.

I gotta get through a room of rolling balls now before I can fight the bears and use the exit? But that's like something from a video game!

It didn't really occur to me until now how there hasn't been any obstacles like this so far. The challenge has come from fighting other robot animals and finding a way to get where I wanted to be.

ZONE 1, LEVEL 6: FAT BEAR MOUNTAIN

What the hell? I did the thing with the switches to make the trophy for this level appear, but it won't let me collect it! It's like a golden ghost tap without substance, a spectral faucet here to torment me.

Right, now that I've jumped a gauntlet of ramps, solved a timed switch problem and failed to collect a tap, I need to move onto getting rid of angry animals. That's what it said in the mission briefing anyway. There's a bear, a dog and a ram and all I have to defeat them is a mouse with a spiky tail... but I have a plan. I'll lure them into each other and after the fight I'll use the body of the one of the victims to kill the victor!

Fight each other, you jerks! I've got a bear, a missile dog, and a ram here and they're all stuck on scenery or ignoring each other. Meanwhile I'm controlling a puny mouse that's wounded and allergic to all that water down there.

Every animal has robots it'll attack and robots it'll ignore, and I can't tell if these are being friendly to each other or just being dumb.

Anyway I eventually got my hands on the bear, used him to activate the switch and then had to push those metal blocks on the right to form a bridge to the exit teleporter in the middle so I could finally escape from playing this game. So I think I'm done for now.


CONCLUSION

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Space Station Silicon Valley is a slick collect 'em up 3D puzzle platformer action comedy with deliberately obnoxious music. The worst thing about the music is that it keeps on playing even after you’ve turned the game off, in your head. I’m having to hum the Jackie Chan Action Kung Fu level music to myself to get rid of it.

I love that Evo nods his head to the tune though, even though he hates it, and when he's a bear he taps his foot in time as well. The game's full of little touches like that, like the way he shakes to get rid of the water after a swim. It's full of robot animals as well, with all kinds of abilities to discover and find a use for. It's just a shame it takes so bloody long for Evo walk back and forth between them. Which makes this game pretty different to body shifting platformer E.V.O. on the SNES, because that has you walking back and forth grinding for exp before you can shift to a new animal on the spot.

Playing this game is like trying to get a job done, except you can only have one tool out at once and all the rest are out in the shed. Actually no, all the rest are scattered around all the place, and when you pick one up you have to drop the one you're using. Also you have to fight them first. There's a lot of walking back and forth in this and the animals are rarely as fast as you want. And during the times where you are getting around fast enough, because you've got a mouse with wheels or a missile dog or whatever, chances are you're going to fall off the side of a cliff or mess up a jump because of the bloody camera and have to do make the same trip twice.

I mean the camera isn't terrible, it actually did a fair job of predicting what I wanted to see a lot of the time. But when it gets it wrong it's a real pain in the ass. Thankfully you can switch to that forward-facing cam for when you absolutely positively want to line yourself up for a jump correctly and get that final purple power cell orb. Not that I really needed any of the power cells, except for when I had 14 out of 15, then I really did. Also the amount you collect apparently determines your strength in the final level.

You can always go back to previous levels and reset them to have another try at collecting them all, which adds a lot of replay value if you're not a perfectionist first time through. Plus there's also hidden trophies you can unlock by reading a walkthrough and doing whatever it says. Okay I was able to stumble across some of the trophies all by myself, like the golden L-block, but rarely. Sadly it's impossible to unlock them all without cheating due that bugged tap trophy on Fat Bear Mountain, so that's kind of demotivating if you're a completionist. That's not actually the worst bug in the game though as apparently the US version can randomly crash if there's an Expansion Pak plugged in.

I wish I enjoyed the game more than I did, as it's all charm and it seems that every level has you doing something a little different. But it's been more tedious and frustrating than it really needs to be, and I haven't even gotten up to the hard levels yet! It's definitely not crap though, so it can have a star:


Seems like if you've got a choice, you want to go with the N64 version though. The PlayStation port has less charm and more slow, plus Dan doesn't get punched at the start which is a huge negative in my book.

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Thanks for reading more of my words, as they're kind of pointless unless someone runs their eyes over them. You could also leave a comment in the box below while you're here, maybe share your thoughts on the game or have a guess at what the next one might be.