Thursday’s Game: SPACE STATION SILICON VALLEY Game Overview: Space Station Silicon Valley (or SSSV) was released on October 21, 1998 by a Scottish developer called DMA Design. While DMA had critical games such as Lemmings under their belt, they were still relatively unknown and it would be years until they would release Grand Theft Auto and rebrand themselves to Rockstar to make them a household name. Although I can’t do justice to the history of DMA Design or even fully cover the interesting development of SSSV, I do urge you to follow my links to get a better insight on these two very interesting topics.
In 1998,
DMA Design was founded in Dundee, Scotland by hobbyist programmer David Jones. It was a small company that focused their releases on the Amiga and worked very closely with publisher Psygnosis. Their first breakout hit Lemmings arrived in 1991 and quickly catapulted the studio from fledging to certified developers. After a few years of nothing but Lemmings sequels and ports the studio looked elsewhere for new development deals and found Nintendo. In 1994 Nintendo published DMA’s latest game Uniracers, which released to commercial and critical acclaim. This was the beginning of a very unique relationship with the Japanese giant.
Thanks to the success of Uniracers, Nintendo approached DMA Design about joining the
Dream Team , a group of developers handpicked by Nintendo to develop games for their upcoming 64-bit console codenamed Project Reality. DMA’s first game would be Body Harvest a game that suffered a notoriously difficult development. Although interesting,
we’ll leave that story for another day . The game we’re focusing on is Space Station Silicon Valley, the second game DMA would eventually release for the Nintendo 64.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with SSSV, it’s a highly unique 3D platforming action puzzle hybrid that has the player swapping between the bodies of eccentric cyborg animals in order to accomplish the goals given to you by your partner. The story follows the misadventures of Dan Danger and his android partner Evo who are on a mission to investigate a lost space station that was designed as an advanced zoological amusement park. While approaching the space station the pair unwittingly crash into it causing the body of Evo to break apart leaving only a memory chip intact. Evo must now traverse the different biomes of the space station and possess the cyborg animals to accomplish the missions Dan gives him and to eventually reclaim his lost body parts.
SSSV is a landmark game, not because it’s a fun hidden gem, but it along with Body Harvest would help plant the seeds for the studio’s biggest game Grand Theft Auto. The team was mostly comprised of brand new hires to the game industry, some who would go on to manage the company, but the
game's development began rather humbly . SSSV was part of a three game publishing deal with BMI Interactive and the team selected the Ultra 64 due to simply being the most powerful hardware at the time. The project began as a series of tech demos and experiments on the hardware where several new ideas such as developing a new animation system from scratch. Interestingly a lot of these experiments would go on to influence their future titles as Obbe Vermeij, SSSV’s lead programmer explains: “
In GTAIV the idea of code generated animation came back in a big way with the inclusion of NaturalMotion's Euphoria. Although much more advanced than the system used in SSSV the idea is similar .”
The game’s first unveiling at E3 1997,
the game had a solid showing wowing critics with its open world design and variety of playable characters. When the game was eventually completed it released to critical fanfare with multiple publications lauding it with
high scores . However not all was good as sales for the game were markedly less than stellar due to development delays and Nintendo’s own marketing budget allocation. SSSV’s programmer Grant Salvona explains; “Nintendo worked on a scheme of dividing their marketing budget into quarters... SSSV was initially penciled in for a Q1 1998 release... unfortunately it slipped to a Q3 release when Nintendo put all their advertising behind their own Ocarina of Time release.” Although the door was closed on any future opportunities for SSSV many of the team members went on to bigger and better things within Rockstar and elsewhere. Even SSSV lived on being an inspiration in DMA’s future games. Vermij, who became a technical director at Rockstar North feels there’s even a bit of SSSV in GTA: “
There is a strong connection between SSSV and GTAIII. The concept of an entity using vehicles to navigate the game world is very similar .”
Personal Impressions: I played Space Station Silicon Valley for quite a while but I couldn’t tell you exactly how long I spent with it. I imagine at least a couple of hours but I lost track of time since I was so engrossed in clearing as many levels as I could in one sitting. I can tell you that I managed to clear the European Zone, which is a collection of 10 grassland style levels that represents about a third of the game. Once I finished that set I thought it was a good stopping point for the day and more than enough for me to write down my impressions. One thing is for sure; I do plan on going back to this game to beat it. Its incredibly unique hybrid design of puzzle solving, platforming, and creature possession has me hooked.
The game begins with a humorous and very British intro with two characters that look designed very much in the Wallace and Gromit style (which was no accident). After the duo crash land on the space station crushing a poor dog who’s just professed his adoration for his sheep girlfriend, Evo takes over the body of the recently deceased pup and the player is in control. As mentioned earlier Evo has lost his body parts and is now a hapless computer chip that has the ability to possess the bodies of the wacky cybernetic animals that are loose on the space station. It’s this unique mechanic that is at the core of SSSV and every roadblock and puzzle you encounter requires intelligent use of these animals to clear ever level.
Controls are simple with the analog stick moving your character, the R-button allowing you to swap hosts, the C-buttons functioning as your camera controls, the Z-button brings in your camera for more accurate aiming, and the A/B buttons act as context sensitive action buttons that change depending on which animal you’re in control of. Although I can’t go into detail about the differences between the 40+ animals, suffice to say they all offer a different play experience. Every animal features a unique method of propulsion (feet, wheels, etc.), has a unique navigation action (jumping, floating, etc.), and an offensive action (biting, rockets, etc.) to help clear each level. It’s these unique actions and the clever placement of animals that the game flexes its puzzle muscle in the guise of ridiculous missions given to you by your partner Dan Danger.
Although I only played roughly a third of the game a lot of the more interesting levels are naturally towards the end. However even in these early parts a glimmer of insanity rears its head once in a while where the tasks you’re asked to accomplish are as wacky as the animals themselves. One level has you usurping the evil dogs and reclaiming control of a farm by defeating a rocket launching dog with a ram, growing carrots to reach the farm house and activating a bridge so you can take your rocket launching dog to clear the house of teleporting foxes on wheels. While another level has gameplay straight out of Star Fox while you’re flying around attacking bi-plane dogs in order to collect a piece of your missing body. Although those two levels don’t really convey the full spectrum of absurd situations you find yourself in hopefully it demonstrates the unique body swapping gameplay and scenarios that can be found throughout the game’s 31 levels.
Although I’ve touched lightly on it, essentially the game’s structure has you starting off in a level with a few objectives you need to accomplish which will unlock the level’s exit teleporter. These missions typically contain no story elements to tie them together for the most part. The overarching goal of reclaiming Evo’s lost body and solving the mystery of the space station is still there but the level objectives are usually a random assortment of self-contained comical objectives. That’s not a bad thing but aside from the level’s theme and animal roster, there’s not much of a plot build up with the only thing keeping them in order is the difficulty curve. Once you accomplish these objectives the exit teleporter activates and the player needs to reach the exit to clear the level. Additional bonus objectives are available such as collecting all the Power Cores (coins essentially) and accomplishing a hidden puzzle to collect a golden trophy. Collecting all the trophies supposedly unlocks a bonus level but sadly one of the trophies is glitched and can’t be collected so you’ll need a cheating device to manually unlock it.
Overall I highly enjoy this game and there’s still nothing quite like it out there. You can see hints of prototype GTA in the game’s design but while the animal hopping mechanics are faintly similar to the car swapping, it’s still a markedly different game altogether. It’s not a lengthy game by any means but the levels all exhibit very tightly designed levels that hit the mark for the most part. While the game won’t win any awards for it’s puzzle design I think the unique atmosphere and mechanics make up for some of the confusing scenarios and obtuse level layouts. If you’re interested at all in playing a strikingly unique game or just want to try out one of the Nintendo 64’s hidden gems, by all means play SSSV immediately.
Where to Find It: Space Station Silicon Valley is a console exclusive in the US, but in Europe it was ported to the PS1 and GBC. The PS1 version is titled
Evo's Space Adventures and porting responsibilities was handled by RuneCraft. Unfortunately the PS1 version is miserable with awful performance and missing features although being released two years later. The
GBC version features the same title and was an attempt to be a faithful demake of the original game but it’s also rather poor. If you plan on picking up the original you can expect to pay around $20 - $30 for just a cart or even as high as $40 for a complete set (box, manual, game).
Video Coverage: Contained in a spoiler for bandwidth and performance reasons:
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