Space Station Silicon Valley

File:Space Station Silicon Valley.jpg

They seem friendly. Lets pet them!

A rather strange Platform Game that takes place on the titular space station. The station was originally intended to be a technological amusement park of sorts, complete with a zoo. It disappears in 2001 shortly after its launch and was thought to be Lost Forever. However in the year 3000, the station reappears on a crash course for Earth and "Heroes for Hire" Dan Danger and his robot sidekick Evo are dispatched to stop it.

On the way, Dan and Evo get in an argument about the radio, which leads to them getting distracted and crashing into the station. They land unharmed, but Evo's attempts to eject don't kick in until after they stop, causing him to launch into the station's ceiling. As a result, Evo's body breaks apart leaving his microchip brain (that can crawl like a spider) helpless. Fortunately for him, the animals on the station have merged with the technology over the years, making them more akin to robots like him. He simply hops into a dog that was killed in the crash and takes control of it.

From there you take over Evo, while Dan sits in the spaceship and does nothing. Evo's loss of his body allows him to jump into any deactivated animal and use its abilities. This helps him meet the objectives of each level, which of course opens up the next. Each animal is weirder than the next, including missile launching dogs with wheels for feet, rams and sheep on springs, helicopter rabbits, and camels with a turreted cannon for a hump.

Originally for the N64, it was later ported to the Playstation under the title Evo's Space Adventures. While not incredibly well known, the game was well received and critically acclaimed, despite several glitches (including one major one that somehow made it past Quality Control). The game never ceases to be wacky, original, or fun.

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This game provides examples of:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Subverted. The Stinky Sewers level is actually quite cramped, more like a normal sewer. Also there is poop scattered about, and can be eaten while controlling a rat. Doing so gets you the level's bonus trophy.
• All in a Row: Sheep/springs will follow rams/spring rams, rats will follow king rats, and penguins will follow king penguins.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The Engine Room and the Ending.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: There are close to 50 animals to swap between. Fortunately they all only have two abilities, so there are no complicated move sets to memorize.
• Bittersweet Ending: Space Station Silicon Valley smashes into the New York Harbor, gets completely destroyed, and all the animals must die in order to save the earth from being terrorized. Oh, and not to mention that Dan takes all the credit for saving the world, despite having spent the entire game sitting in the ship and yelling at you - and then even sells the ending sequence to pay for a new ship!
• Bonus Level: There is one, but only accessible via cheat codes. See Game Breaking Bug below.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Since you can control any of the animals, there are no real bosses (until the end). Some animals are very hard to take down however, filling the role of level boss.
• Brain In a Jar
• Bubblegloop Swamp: The Swamp of Eternal Stench.
• Chasing Your Tail: The King Rat in the Stinky Sewers. Not helped by his rat minions.
• Collection Sidequest: The purple power cells, which make Evo stronger in the end, and the hidden souvenirs, which would lead to 100% completion bonuses, if one wasn't broken.
• Colony Drop: Subverted. At the end of the game, the entire space station (the largest one ever built) falls straight down into New York Harbor. Ironically, Dan, Evo and all the animals are unharmed, but the space station is in ruins. The Earth suffers no damage from the collision, either
• Com Mons: Subverted. Even the beginning animals have important uses.
• Cranium Ride: Occasionally possible.
• Crate Expectations
• Crippling Overspecialization: Each animal only gets two abilities, making some less effective against others. Sheep don't even get an attack (But they can "baa!").
• Skippable Boss: In a rather weird example, if you skip the opening cutscene for the final level, you'll end up going to the animals' attack on the city without meeting the Final Boss. If you wish to face the boss, you'll have to watch the entire cutscene.
• Defeat Means Playable: More so than any other game perhaps.
• Die, Chair, Die!: You can blow up the speakers playing the background music, as well as the terminal screens.
• Eternal Engine: The Engine Room and the Rat-o-Matic are the straight examples. However since the game takes place on a space station, elements of this pop up all over the place.
• Everything's Better with Monkeys: Not that the gorilla makes anything better.
• Everything's Better with Penguins: Snowball chucking parachute penguins and their rocket powered king.
• Exploding Barrels
• Floating Platforms
• Game Breaking Bug: The souvenir trophy for Fat Bear Mountain can be found, but not gathered. Your character will pass through it without any effect. Sadly this makes the game impossible to be 100% winnable, and the ending bonus level cannot be accessed without cheating.
• Game Within a Game: Any of the events to get Evo's body back.
• Gentle Giant: Polar Bears/Polar Bear Tanks will not attack you if you are a Penguin, possibly because they have no idea what one is.
• Green Hill Zone: The Europe levels.
• Gravity Screw: Rocky Hard Place
• Grimy Water: Subverted; some robot animals have better protection against water than others. Played straight in the Swamp of Eternal Stench.
• Goomba Stomp: Though never explicitly stated, relatively heavier animals can do this. Sometimes they don't even need to be able to jump, oddly enough.
• Hilarity in Zoos: Perhaps the weirdest example yet.
• The Hyena: Unsurprisingly, the hyena (though the wheeled version less so). It's contagious laugh is it's main offensive weapon, causing non-hyenas to laugh themselves to death.
• Idle Animation: The animals will often bob their heads to the music.
• Incendiary Exponent
• Inevitable Tournament: I'll just say this: The kangaroos wear boxing gloves.
• Invisible Wall: Justified, as they are the glass walls of the station. You can even see Evo's reflection.
• It's Up to You: Because Dan certainly isn't going to do anything.
• Jobber: "Prepare for the first bout... a useless camel!"
• Jump Physics: Sheep can floaty hop like Princess Peach for some reason. Penguins at least justify it with their parachutes.
• Jungle Japes: The jungle levels, including one named... Jungle Japes!
• Lazy Bum: Dan. Never leaves the ship and is only there to give you your objectives and occasional advice along with a snide comment. In the end, he takes all the credit for saving the Earth. And then he sells the ending sequence to pay for a new ship. Bastard.
• Lift of Doom: *Squish*
• Load-Bearing Boss: "Ah, I think The Evil Brain was driving this thing... AND SPACE STATION SILICON VALLEY IS ON A COLLISION COURSE WITH EARTH! This is all your fault, Evo. I'm telling."
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: On the first arctic level, you switch on a large computer, which turns on the secondary engines, speeding up the crash course to Earth. Oops.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Many animals are mashed up with vehicles. And have missiles.
• Olympus Mons: The Lion, the Helirabbit, and the Racing Dog are the most powerful animals with which you actually get to kill things. The Demonic Spider animals don't see much killing once you down them, sadly.
• Pass Through the Rings
• Prehistoria: Borassic Park
• Puzzle Pan: Free Tour!
• Racing Mini Game: Walrus 64
• Robot Buddy: Inverted, with you as the robot buddy.
• Saving the World: Subverted in the end. Too good even for spoilers.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: The beginning of the Engine Room pits you against very powerful bear and a racing dog with missiles, with you as a weaker wheeled racing fox. The idea is to get the two bruisers to cross paths and fight, using yourself as bait. Alternatively, you could simply kill the racing dog with the fox, and then fight the bear yourself.
• Shifting Sand Land: The desert levels.
• Shout-Out: One to Close Encounters of the Third Kind in Pinball Blizzard.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The arctic levels. Very little annoying ice fortunately.
• Space Zone: Rocky Hard Place.
• Story to Gameplay Ratio: About as much as Mario 64.
• Stuff Blowing Up
• Super Drowning Skills: Racing Mice, Ski Huskies and Desert Foxes are not waterproof and take damage while swimming. Scorpions take massive water damage and sink straight to the bottom.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Heavier animals will sink, but don't need air since they're robots.
• Ted Baxter: Upon completing the final level, Dan exclaims "I did it, Evo! I saved the world!" Even though he really just sat was trapped in his ship the whole time.
• This Is a Drill: Spring Thing/Spring Ram
• Unexpected Shmup Level: Of the rail shooter variety.
• We Can Rule Together: When Evo reaches the center of the station, The Evil Brain offers to let Evo join him by claiming "With your body and my brain we will rule the stars."
• We Help the Helpless: And a steal at only 200 cretz!
• What Could Have Been: This music video shows some shots of the beta. The flying mouse would have been a fun addition.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Getting the bonus trophy in each level often requires senselessly killing all of a certain type of animal. One particularly disturbing example occurs in the level "Hoppa Choppa", in which you get the trophy by killing a group of rabbits that you spent the rest of the level trying to protect.
• Zero Effort Boss: The Final Boss. No worries, though, he's a bait and switch for the endgame sequence.