The E3 machine rages on, with even more night shows and trailers and first impressions, but we here at Alternative to E3 are hiding under the bedcovers with a flashlight and a beloved childhood novel instead. Well, beloved childhood video game console. I guess it'd project its own light if you brought a small CRT in under there with you. Maybe people did that as kids in the late 90s, I'm not sure where my wistful nostalgia imagery is really at these days.
While I take this analogy out behind the corncrib to put it out of its misery, I'd like you all to recall the theme of Alt-E3 this year: N64 3D platformers that, while of high quality (or sentimental value, in the case of Chameleon Twist), don't really suit a proper in-depth stage-by-stage analysis of the sort Super Mario 64received from me a few weeks back. Today's game is a little more in the realm of possibility, because it's so endlessly inventive and goofy, but I'll explain why I'm relegating it to a one-and-done brief jaunt here.
There, there, earlier bedcovers analogy. Close your eyes. Your suffering will soon be over.
Space Station Silicon Valley
While the N64 saw a moderate amount of support from western developers, there were two in particular - both British - that invested a considerable amount of time and effort into producing off-beat and well-acclaimed games for the system. Rare, of course, is the more famous of the two; along with their highly regarded FPS games GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, they produced a bevvy of 3D platformers that are considered by many to be on the same tier as Super Mario 64 in terms of establishing the parameters of the 3D platformer genre to all those that might follow. The other is DMA Design, the original creators of Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings, who later eclipsed Rare's fame and fortune in their current incarnation as Rockstar North.
DMA Design had a long and troubled history with Nintendo, working with them to produce sci-fi TPS Body Harvest and today's game, Space Station Silicon Valley, before they eventually broke off their "arrangement" with Nintendo to produce games for their cartridge-based system as second-party developers. They were also bought out by Rockstar Games around this time, keeping their Edinburgh-based studio and becoming Rockstar North. The team behind this game in particular would go on to use what they learned in building 3D environments filled with independent AI to create Grand Theft Auto III, and the
So while Space Station Silicon Valley might seem like an extremely odd and inconsequential little 3D platformer-puzzle game, an also-ran in the library of great platformers the system would see, it actually has a great deal of significance in the grand scheme of things. GTA V might never have happened without this game as a stepping zone. Just keep that tidbit in mind while I'm driving around a racecourse as a remote-controlled robot mouse.
Welcome to Space Station Silicon Valley! The game gives off a lot of 50s B-Movie vibes, but it's as intrinsically British as Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon was intrinsically Japanese. Maybe closer to a Wallace and Gromit ambience.Here are our (for cheap) heroes for hire, Dan Danger and his trusty sidekick EVO the robot.Like any bespectacled Dan, Mr. Danger is very fond of specific types of music and won't tolerate an uppity android changing the radio station. One assumes this hip music for groovy cats involves fighting or liquor.Long-time partners, EVO and Dan have a relaxed, harmonious working relationship.As expected, this triggers a collision with an asteroid that sends them hurtling towards Space Station Silicon Valley.SSSV, in the fiction, disappeared for a thousand years and came back just recently. It's on a collision course with the Earth, which is why we're here. Fortunately, we aren't dealing with Event Horizon demons but rather a robot animal uprising: the various zoo creatures and lab rats of this massive laboratory have now taken over the asylum, as it were.It's taken some time for the artificial creatures in their artificial environments to establish an ecoystem of sorts, which we're of course completely destroying with our less-than-subtle approach.The elicit and probably forbidden burgeoning relationship between a robot dog and a robot sheep is unceremoniously cut short when we crash right into poor RoboRover. EVO, equally, does not fare so well after the crash. Its parts get spread across the rest of the station, leaving only the microchip brain (that is still able to walk around on its little circuit legs, adorably). Fortunately, EVO is compatible with the robot animals.And this is essentially the crux of the game: finding mechanical animals, shorting them out (usually by beating them up), taking them over and completing the tasks each level sets out. It's platformer-ish, but there's a significant puzzle/adventure element. Hence, why an in-depth analysis wouldn't work: too much of the game's appeal is in figuring each stage out.One of the tasks to inhabit a sheep, so I might as well kill the one that was just trying to romance the dog I'm in. A Robeo and J-Ewe-liet scenario. (No amount of terrible puns will exonerate how messed up this is.)Each new animal you inhabit gets one of these cute T-800 readouts. What's nuts is that every single one of these stats is actually significant to the gameplay in some respect. Water resistance tells you if a robot can swim, armor/strength is for health and even intelligence tells you how hard their AI is to outwit. Of special import are the two skills: they're mapped to the two face buttons and tell you what each animal can do. The baa! is essentially pointless Magikarp Frolics, but the floaty hop is a Princess Peach hover jump that makes platforming easier as a sheep.To go over the items briefly: the blue fuzzy electric thing in the background is energy, as in a health refill, and the purple orb in the foreground is a collectible. I believe they factor into the ending some way, and there's fifteen per stage. Again, many 3D platformers were simply following Super Mario 64's example: while most of them would add on mechanics of their own, the "basics" would stay the same, and that included semi-optional collectibles that the game would track.Finding some energy and acquiring a sheep robot shell - two simple tasks meant to introduce the game's core progression - opens the teleporter to the next stage. You can either stick around to collect those 15 purple doodads, or just move on.Oh yeah, you can talk to Dan too. Dan, if you hadn't figured it out, only serves a support role. Well, rather he barks commands to EVO to do all the work while he remains stuck napping in his ship. "Support" is probably too strong a word for it. (If you talk to him, the stage's theme is replaced with Dan's "hip music" that EVO hated. Dude is a colossal jerk.)Probably not easy to make out but there's four "worlds" and just over thirty stages total. The first world, "Europe", has a few more stages than most due to its tutorial nature.Oi! This course makes no sense, and neither does its name. Much of this game's inexplicable weirdness has to be tolerated to get to the good stuff, like figuring out how to do those things. A mouse with wheels, huh.I feel like I saw this in Banjo-Kazooie somewhere. Maybe I'm imagining it. I'm just including this here, in case people didn't think it was very platformer-y.Important to note: the racing mouse has wheels for racing, and will short-circuit if you drop it in water. It's not an all-terrain racing mouse, after all.You can get into a little race with a wheeled dog if you happen to drive close to that checkered finishing line. The game absolutely does not hint this anywhere; like the blue coins of Super Mario Sunshine, a lot of these hidden tasks need to be intuited from contextual hints.I managed to win a gold trophy for beating that dog in a two lap race around the lake. There's one of these "souvenirs" in every stage, but you're never explicitly told how to get them. They tend to involve a lot of trial and error experimentation (or looking up a FAQ, realistically). It's actually reminding me of Chantelise a bit.The sheep aren't difficult to round up if you find a dog robot, since they'll automatically run from you, but you can also be a sheep and round them up with your baa!s, which causes them to follow you. Alternatively, you can just kill them all, occupy them and walk them over. The game's fairly good at presenting multiple paths to a solution.And with that the second stage, and this LP, comes to a close.
Space Station Silicon Valley is one of those games that defined the N64 for me, more so than many of the system's biggest sellers. It broke new ground in creating 3D environments that were far more focused on exploiting player resourcefulness and perspicacity than on platformer traversal and combat, though there's plenty of those as well. Like Super Mario 64 there's definitely a sense of the pioneer spirit to this one, even if it's a little rough in many other areas. It was originally released in late 1998 to give you some context: a month before The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but a month after the seminal Buck Bumble.
As stated, though, simply discussing a number of puzzle stages and their solutions wouldn't make for a great analysis, and spoiling all that would end up being far more of a disservice to someone who might wish to play the game someday than dissecting the anatomy of Tick Tock Clock and its clockface puzzle would be.
Come back again tomorrow as we celebrate the end of another E3 and its embarrassment of gaming riches with something else that frequently gives into overindulgence and awkward opening presentations. Let's just say that... this time, I'm in the mood. (No, not for that.)
