Space Station Silicon Valley

1. Possess a body in the first 10 seconds. You’re Evo, a microchip — no attacks, no jump, one-hit death. Dead robotic animals litter the Engine Room; walk into one and press A. Now you have legs, health, and whatever that creature does.

2. Test every ability before you move. The dog double-jumps and barks to stun. The sheep headbutts and floats on its wool. C-buttons cycle through moves. Puzzles lock to specific animals — wrong body, no progress.

3. Eject with purpose, not panic. Press B to leave your current host. You’ll swap bodies mid-level (mouse squeezes through vents, bear breaks crates). Drop the old body near the new one so you can backtrack if the puzzle demands it.

4. Grab the four Souvenir trophies per level to unlock later worlds. They hide behind animal-gated obstacles — high ledges need the dog’s double-jump, cracked walls need the bear’s charge. The Engine Room tutorial trophy sits behind a vent only the mouse reaches.

5. Fight the camera with R. Hold R to recenter behind Evo. Fixed angles in tight corridors murder depth perception — hug walls near ledges.

6. Bodies die permanently. The green HUD bar is your animal’s health. When it empties, you eject as the chip — find a new host or eat a checkpoint restart.

7. Skip the checklist your first time through. Each level tracks trophies, animals catalogued, secrets. Aim for the exit and obvious trophies. The Fox boss unlocks once you clear the Engine Room’s mandatory objectives — completionism comes later.

• Launch cartridges can’t finish the game. The final level “Danger! Danger!” crashes on all 1.0 ROMs — geometry bug in the level data. DMA shipped revised carts months later, but rental stock often stayed 1.0. If you hit 99% and the game locks, check your ROM hash or cart label.

• Body-swapping mid-jump carries momentum. Jump in a fast chassis (dog, fox), swap to a heavy body (hippo, bear) at the apex — you keep the horizontal speed and gain the new mass for floor-breaks and switch triggers. The game doesn’t zero velocity on possession.

• Dead animals despawn when you cross zone triggers. Each level has invisible loading thresholds; step back over one and any corpse you left behind vanishes. If you need a specific body for backtracking, drag it with you or memorize the respawn point — some animals spawn once per level.

• Energy drains faster in larger bodies. Bear and rhino chassis burn roughly 2× the energy-per-second of smaller frames. Exploring or puzzle-solving? Swap into the lightest viable body (mouse, fox) to stretch battery life between pickups.

• Certain animals have hidden secondary abilities the UI never explains. Dog barks stun enemies (C-Down), hyena’s laugh reveals invisible platforms, bear’s ground-pound (crouch + A) breaks specific floor tiles that look identical to normal terrain. Test every button on new bodies.

• Camera-relative jumps will kill you in rotating areas. Late-game levels have spinning platforms and gravity-shift zones; stick input is always camera-forward, not character-forward. Recenter with Z-target before precision jumps or you’ll leap sideways into pits.

Arctic World — Ice Floe Crossing (Level 2)

The jump from the final ice platform to the exit requires the Fox body, but most players attempt it with the Husky they’ve been using for combat. The Husky can’t make the distance. Backtrack to the previous area — a Fox corpse sits near the electric fence section. Possess it, return to the ice floes, and use the Fox’s superior jump height. The timing window is generous once you have the right body.

Jungle World — Bomb Puzzle Room (Level 3)

The room with the three pressure plates and the timed explosive requires the Dog body to carry bombs, but the game never tutorializes this. Players waste minutes trying to activate all three plates simultaneously with different animals. Possess the Dog (found near the waterfall), pick up a bomb with A, carry it to the first plate, drop it, repeat for plates two and three. The explosion timer is long enough to set all three if you don’t stop moving.

Desert World — Invisible Platform Maze (Level 4)

The “invisible” platforms leading to the bonus area aren’t invisible — they’re sand-colored and flush with the skybox, making them nearly impossible to see. DK Mode’s camera makes this worse. Walk slowly forward from the cactus cluster while tapping Z to center the camera; the platforms reveal themselves as slight texture seams. The Bear body’s weight prevents fall-through on the thinner sections.

Engine Room — Final Boss Crash

The game’s most infamous bug: the final boss arena fails to load Evo’s microchip body in NTSC cartridges without the 1.1 revision ^cite. Players complete the entire game only to find the end unwinnable. No in-game solution exists. PAL cartridges and the Japanese release are unaffected. Emulator savestates can sometimes force-spawn the chip model, but hardware players are stuck unless they have access to a PAL console.