#DMA DESIGN

[retrocgads]

UK 1998

[n64retro]

[mvfm-25]

" Grand Theft Auto 3 expands the very idea of what a game has traditionally been! "

PlayStation Magazine (PSM) n51 - November, 2001.

[scottishgames]

35 Years Ago - DMA Moved Into Its First Office

On August 1st 1989 DMA Design, the Dundee studio behind Lemmings & Grand Theft Auto moved into its first ever office in Dundee's Nethergate.

On August 1st 1989 the fresh-faced youngsters of DMA Design moved into their first office space, above a restaurant at the foot of Perth Road – officially 134b Nethergate – in Dundee. According to official games legend Mike Dailly (seriously, he’s got the award and everything…): While the influence DMA has over the Games Industry is incalculable, we were just young guys having fun making games…

[alln64games]

Space Station Silicon Valley

NA release: 21st October 1998

PAL release: November 1998

JP release: N/A

Developer: DMA Design

Publisher: Take-Two

N64 Magazine Score: 91%

Space Station Silicon Valley is a mission-based puzzle platformer where you reanimate the corpses of dead animals (don’t worry, they’re all robots). It was developed by DMA design (makers of Lemmings, GTA and Body Harvest) and is an immense amount of fun. The game did ship with a bug that meant that you couldn’t pick up one of the collectables, but I played a version that had been patched by fans that fixes the issue.

You play as Evo, a robot that loses its body as he and his hero-for-hire partner crash into a mysterious station that’s on a course for Earth. Evo ends up as just a chip, but discovers that he can take over the bodies of deceased animal robots.

In each level, you must complete multiple objectives, usually done by killing the animals, taking over their bodies and using their various abilities to complete what you need. It all sounds horrific and disturbing when trying to explain it, but the game manages to be incredibly charming throughout this, with happy music that is played through the station speakers (which you can destroy to shut them up).

Discovering how each animal moves and how to use them is one of the main things I love about Space Station Silicon Valley. They all have different kinds of movement – some are like a typical platformer, others are like cars and some can only move when jumping – and the powers have various uses that aren’t just needed to solve the puzzles of the level, but to find all the collectables. This concept was also a large part of Super Mario Odyssey, so my like for this is probably why I loved that, too.

Each level has 15 power cells hidden in it to find, some are in plain view, others are hidden extremely well. A few of them can be quite frustrating to get to, such as some high up ones requiring using a vulture’s awful flight to get there. The game’s dreadful camera also doesn’t help matters, as you can never get a good look around and the cameral often likes looking downwards.

The other kind of collectable is a hidden trophy in each level, which is found by doing a secret objective. Sometimes these are obvious, such as the second level having a racetrack, and often killing everything will yield results, while others are very tricky, such as listing to penguins make sound and recreating it on a keyboard (being tone-deaf, I looked that one up).

Still, even with these annoying ones, it was a joy to collect everything. I’m not 100% completing every N64 game, but this one was one where I wanted to do so.

At the end of each of the four regions, you’ll encounter a level where you find a piece of Evo’s original body. These are quite different to the main gameplay, featuring different events. For example the second area ends with a Jetski-like race called Walrace 64 where you have to win a race as a robotic walrus boat.

Once all these are done, the final mission is defending Earth against invading robots, but unfortunately is probably the weakest level of the game. Still, that slight downer is just the end of a wonderful experience.

While the difficulty is more of a rollercoaster than a curve, you do get used to some of the techniques the game uses, and the wild and wacky robot animals are always an absolute joy to discover – each time you see a new one, you’re eager to kill it and give it a spin.

Space Space Station Silicon valley is a wonderful platformer and one I think more people should try out.

The important thing, though, is that you’ll keep on coming back to it until you’ve found every animal, explored every single nook and cranny, and beaten every bonus game. It’s compulsive, addictive and most important of all, it’ll have you grinning like a rabid chimp while you play.

- Martin Kitts, N64 Magazine #22

Remake or remaster?

A remaster would be great for this. Have it adapted into widescreen, give it a new camera and fix a few things here or there. A few bonus levels would be nice, too.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Space Station Silicon Valley

[1000-skulls]

All New World of Lemmings (1994 - DMA Design - DOS)

[swaggerblonde]

Swagger Blonde's Retro Pap Lemmings Sega Master System

[devileaterjaek]

[roundthewheel]

recent BLOCKER TRAP writings:

BLASTER MASTER ZERO — a perfect example of what a remake should actually be used for

LEMMINGS (NES) (improvement hack) — long considered one of the hottest-garbage ports of the classic save-em-all puzzler, a new improvement hack has now made it surprisingly playable

KRUSTY'S SUPER FUN HOUSE — like most 90s simpsons games, this one is not very good, but it's more all right than most, and this time, the flaws aren't acclaim's fault

[z2z-gaming-and-random-art-ai]

Back Cover to AI Art S2E53 - Grand Theft Auto III

Older video games were notorious for back cover descriptions that have nothing to do with the game so let's see what a text-to-image generator makes of these descriptions. Season 2 sees an increase in art creations for each game up from 1 in the first season to 6 for the second season 

1. Intro - 00:00 

2. Back Cover and Text Description - 00:10 

3. Creation 1 - 00:30 

4. Creation 2 - 00:50 

5. Creation 3 - 01:10 

6. Creation 4 - 01:30 

7. Creation 5 - 01:50 

8. Creation 6 - 02:10 

9. Outro – 02:30 

Developed by DMA Design (The future Rockstar North) Grand Theft Auto III is the third mainline entry in the Grand Theft Auto series and the Sixth release overall in the open-world action crime sandbox, it is however the first in the series to make the jump to a 3D open world, with previous entries in the series being top-down perspective game. 

Grand Theft Auto was released in 2001 on the PlayStation 2 with a Windows release the following year. GTA3 was finally ported to Mac in 2011 alongside iOS and Android releases. Ports to the PS3 in 2012 and the PS4 in 2015 would also follow. 

For more Back Cover to AI Art videos check out these playlists 

Season 1 of Back Cover to AI Art 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJOZYl1h1CGhd82prEQGWAVxY3wuQlx3 

Season 2 of Back Cover to AI Art 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJOZYl1h1CEdLNgql_n-7b20wZwo_yAD

[retrocgads]

UK 1998

[n64retro]

Body Harvest DMA Design / Midway Nintendo 64 1998

[psyvhs]

Hi I had drawing video game company's

[mvfm-25]

" Respect is everything! "

PlayStation Magazine (PSM) n27 - November, 1999.

[scottishgames]

It Was 33 Years Ago Today: Happy Birthday Lemmings!

It's the 33rd anniversary of Lemmings! The classic videogame from Dundee's DMA Design, which helped put Scotland on the global games map.

Today, February 14th, 2024, marks the 33rd anniversary of Lemmings, the game that transcended mere entertainment to become a cultural icon and a catalyst for Scotland’s thriving game development industry. But before the green-haired hordes invaded screens worldwide, let’s rewind to 1991 and trace its remarkable journey. Born from the minds of DMA Design (now of course Rockstar North), a small…

[alln64games]

Body Harvest

PAL release: 30th September 1998

NA release: 20th October 1998

JP release: N/A

Developer: DMA Design

Publisher: Gremlin (PAL), Midway (NA)

N64 Magazine Score: 91%

Body Harvest was originally going to be a large collaboration between DMA Design and Nintendo, but Nintendo ended up pulling out, leaving DMA to work it all out on their own. Despite this, DMA turned out something impressive in size and scope.

This game was the birth of the current open world modern-day open world games – many people associate it with GTA 3 on PS2, but many aspects of that can be found in Body Harvest. Of course, both were made by DMA Design (now known as Rockstar North), but it’s amazing how much of what they did started on the N64.

Alien bugs keep harvesting humans and, as humanity are on their last legs, the hero Adam and his assistants (a woman in a skimpy outfit and a robot) are sent back in time to stop multiple invasions to save humanity.

Roaming out of your time ship, the game feels like a 3rd person shooter – the controls are pretty good for the time, with a big help from autoaim. However, before you encounter your first enemies, you’ll come across a car, that you can hop in.

The vehicles are very odd to control by today’s standards, but you can get used to them. There are a massive amount of vehicles in the game – and not just cars, but tanks, planes, boats, helicopters and more. Some have their own weapons and special abilities, while all essentially act as armour for you – you don’t lose your health while in a vehicle, becoming vulnerable once they blow up.

The vehicles aren’t just for getting to places, ether, they’re all part of the “puzzle” of each area. The open world isn’t just a backdrop for the game, but is integral to the design of the game. You’ll encounter many roadblock and will need to figure out how to get past. It’s something that I feel a lot of open world games lack and you’re constantly thinking about how to get about the landscape.

The first area itself is impressive in size and scope, and that’s just one of the maps. There are four main areas – Greece 1916, Java 1941, America 1966, Siberia 1991 – that have unique looks and vehicles, all with its own puzzle to figure out. There’s also a final mission that takes place on the alien comet, but it’s a more straightforward combat mission.

I did find some parts of Java and America a bit too difficult to navigate, and sometimes a harvest will happen in an inconvenient location – as humans are eaten by the large harvester bugs (one of many different types of bug aliens), a bar will go up and losing too many humans will result in failure -and every so often a mutant will be created to hunt you down.

The difficulty of the game is very unfair, especially due to how the game saves. Each location has 3 or 4 alien processors and you can only save at beacons placed after these have been destroyed. This means that there can be a very long time between saves and messing up a fight can cost you hours of time.

On top of that, the game unfortunately has technical issues. Vehicles can sometimes get stuck, and some are required for progressing. Making a wrong turn when exploring can also lead you to a place where you can’t return, meaning you have to reset. These issues make it a pain to play the original version of it, so I highly encourage playing in a way that utilises save states.

While it certainly shows its age, Body Harvest is a phenomenal game. It’s simple, yet expansive at the same time, and the open world is designed around the gameplay. This game gets overlooked a lot, yet it was definitely an important step in the evolution of video games.

I also do wonder how different Rockstar would have been if Nintendo properly supported this project – would GTA3 had become a GameCube exclusive?

Body Harvest is magnificent. In many ways, it’s the ultimate 3D shoot-’em-up: packed-to-bursting with aliens, peppered with explosions, awash with blood and innards and rollicking good fun. Get it in.

- Tim Weaver, N64 Magazine #22

Remake or remaster?

Body Harvest is perfect for a remake. there are four amazing levels to recreate in higher detail, sort out the issues with saving, add some bonus challenges (perhaps let people return to previous levels to explore fully), better driving mechanics. The game’s world is wonderful, it just needs updating.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Body Harvest