Tonka Space Station (Windows) Walkthrough

Because when you think of Tonka, you always think of outer space.
It's been a while since we last saw Tonka on this channel. I have a long history with this game. I first bought a copy at a Scholastic Book Fair when I was in Kindergarten, but I didn't have any computers that could run it. I did however have a neighbor who was able to run the game, and I gave up pretty quick because I didn't have the faintest idea what was going on.
Then when I went to play this game years later, I found myself having the same issue. That's...kind of a major problem for a game that targets an age 5 demographic. I had no issue whatsoever understanding how to play Tonka Construction or Tonka Search & Rescue at age 4, so the fact that I not only couldn't figure out this game when I was only slightly older was not only a bad sign then, it's an even worse sign when adult me has to open the manual to understand a Tonka game.
In this game, you run a space station and build one of eight modules across eight spaces. The station will be inhabited, so these affect three statistics -- productivity, population, and happiness. You want to get these stats as high as you can so you can advance in rank. Reach the final rank, and you will get to play the bonus level. You also must ensure two sets of resources, food and electricity, won't run out as well.
If that sounds confusing for a game aimed at "ages 5 and up"...that's because it is. Like I said, I had to open the manual to figure this all out, and the game does a very poor job of explaining this to you. Furthermore, there's no on-screen feedback beyond bar graphs that your population, happiness, or productivity is actually growing, which is a MAJOR blow for this target audience. The game also is not clear on what determines your ranking, which is the first thing any game with a ranking/leveling system should prioritize, kids or not. Listen, if you want to tell me you understood the game just fine as a kid, that's fantastic, but I'm standing by my hypothesis that you were the exception, not the rule.
And for such a complicated metagame, the actual minigames themselves are pitifully easy and simplistic. If the metagame was simple to understand I would have been perfectly forgiving of this, but the fact that the minigames are so shallow contrasts badly and leads this to feeling like a game that isn't sure what it wants to be.
Also, yes I did play this on Easy, and it's not as dumb as you might think. I actually tried recording this before, but I hadn't played enough prior to know what the difficulty settings actually did -- and as it turns out, the only thing it does is make the game more tedious. Your stats have to reach much higher levels before the game will rank you up. Which means you have to play all the minigames way, WAY more to actually win. The difficulty settings don't affect the actual difficulty of the minigames themselves. Needless to say, playing on Hard is absolutely infuriating and all I'd do is bore you to tears watching the same minigames over and over again (though I did cut repeats).
One final note, I replaced the non-Tonka Joe FMVs from the original recording with rips straight from the game; the PC I played this on stutters when playing the FMVs really badly.
Communications: You fly through a wormhole and dodge things. Yay.
Defense: By far the quickest module, a good way to get easy happiness stats as the minigame is over in about five seconds.
Factory: GOOD GRIEF COULD THE MINER MOVE ANY SLOWER, WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS
Housing: Easy population stats, woohoo. The minigame itself isn't super riveting but it's the only one that does use the third button.
Harvest: Oh my GOSH you are going to get so sick of seeing this one by the end. Since this is the only way to get food, you're going to be playing this one more than just about any other save for Power Plant, and by golly does it get old. It's also needlessly long which just makes it worse.
Power Plant: Same story as Harvest, but slightly less painful due to being shorter.
Research: The spider-y vehicle is almost as sluggish as the miner, only slightly less. This one is also excruciatingly long and doesn't really give you any serious rewards beyond productivity, which you'll already obtain a bunch of from playing Power Plant over and over to begin with.
Sports: This one's okay, and is an easy happiness farming choice.
Boss: Why did they even give you regular bullets for this? The charge weapon does so much more damage that it's completely rendered moot.
Bonus: You can't reach this one until you get the final rank, and...for all that you have to do to get to it, it sure is underwhelming. It seems to be a "catharsis factor" type game, but there's no effect from your performance. You just collect meaningless items and that's it. Also, I know I got demoted after finishing, but after all the annoyance I went through to make this, the last thing I wanted to do was finish off by ranking back up.
Hope you enjoy.