| JumpStart Adventures 5th Grade: Jo Hammet, Kid Detective | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Knowledge Adventure |
| Publisher(s) | Knowledge Adventure |
| Series | JumpStart |
| Platform(s) | PC (Windows, Macintosh) |
| Release date(s) | 1997 |
| Genre(s) | Educational/adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Everyone (E) |
| Media/distribution | CD-ROM |
JumpStart Adventures 5th Grade: Jo Hammet, Kid Detective is an educational/adventure computer game in the JumpStart series, created by Knowledge Adventure in 1997 and intended for fifth grade students. Throughout the course of the game, which is set in the fictional city of Hooverville, the user must (while playing the role of a female, fifth grade detective by the name of Jo Hammet) thwart the schemes of the evil Dr. X, who is planning to destroy factories and power plants to get revenge on them for cutting his research funding.
Though the game itself has never been significantly updated (beyond the addition of a printable workbook and assessment test when the game was released with new packaging circa 1998), it has been repackaged several times; once with the addition of the Adventure Challenge (later called Extreme Field Trips) bonus disc (circa 2000), once as JumpStart Advanced 5th & 6th Grade (together with Extreme Field Trips and JumpStart Adventures 6th Grade: Mission Earthquest) in 2003, and once more in 2007 as JumpStart Advanced 4th-6th Grade School Essentials (Together with JumpStart Adventures 4th Grade: Sapphire Falls, JumpStart Adventures 6th Grade: Mission Earthquest, Math & Science Challenge, and Language Arts Challenge)[1].
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Jo Hammet is a fifth grade tomboy and the protagonist of JumpStart 5h Grade. Jo seems to love skateboarding and has a rather sarcastic attitude. She is presumably named for the daughter of detective writer Dashiell Hammett.
Jo also appears in JumpStart Adventure Challenge, JumpStart SpyMasters: Unmask the Prankster and JumpStart SpyMasters: Max Strikes Back, though she is barely recognizable as the same character in these since she is drawn in a more realistic style and has few, if any, of the personality traits she had in JumpStart 5th Grade.
The mad scientist styling himself "Dr. X" is the game's villain. Once a brilliant scientist in the field of animal behavior, he has recently lost his marbles and decided to get "revenge" on his former sponsors. His name was mentioned in the credits of JumpStart SpyMasters: Unmask the Prankster.
JumpStart 5th Grade is set up as a series of missions (similar to JumpStart Adventures 3rd Grade: Mystery Mountain and JumpStart Adventures 4th Grade: Haunted Island); however, unlike the aforementioned games, it has a relatively small amount of missions (only 6). Also, unlike most main characters in JumpStart games, Jo Hammet rarely mentions the player's existence, making it seem as if, unlike most other games, in which the player seems to be guided through the game by a virtual host, the player is actually playing Jo Hammet rather than merely "working" with her. In each mission, the games are played in a certain order. Each mission starts with the Hooverville Museum of Art and Geography.
When Jo Hammet was on a field trip with her class, she literally bumped into a man (later revealed to be named Martin). Martin was then carried away by a bunch of thugs. However, he left a mysterious pair of dark glasses behind. Later a talking rat named B. F. Skinny (named after B. F. Skinner) shows up with a crossword. The crossword asks various questions relating to art and geography. The user is enabled to, if they wish, look throughout the museum to find the answers necessary to complete the crossword. Once the crossword puzzle is completed, Jo decodes it and finds the address that she must go to in the next activity.
It turns out the crossword reveals the address of a place that has been sabotaged. Naturally, the door is locked. The user must solve a math puzzle in order to open it. On the first mission, Martin (the person kidnapped by thugs in the art museum) is chained here. He explains that the glasses can be used to read the minds of the thugs. The user then plays a grammar game where they find the correct word to go into the thugs' dialog. Their thoughts reveal the way to get to the bomb.
It turns out that Jo Hammet needs three items in order to get the bomb. She must visit three different places in town to get them.
The person serving the drinks here is really an undercover reporter named Bernie that Jo seems to be acquainted with. Bernie will give Jo Hammet one of the things needed to get to the bomb if the user helps him make drinks for patrons. In this game, the user is given several recipes for drinks in succession. Each recipe calls for different fractional quantities of various juices, as well as several measuring containers that each can hold a certain fractional amount. On the second and third levels, the user must also help serve the drinks.
Jimmy is the recluse that runs the junkyard. The game in the junkyard game is a tangrams game. The junk must be moved and rotated until it matches the diagram.
The Boulder Canyon Mine Shaft was closed by the Park Service due to falling rocks. Maggie Mead hasn't any visitors but Jo Hammet since then. Maggie Mead needs three items retrieved from the mineshaft. The further down the user goes, the older the objects are. Maggie needs one object from each layer. The lowest layer has natural artifacts such as dinosaur bones. The middle layer has Native American artifacts. The uppermost layer has artifacts from early America.
Sometimes before going to a place, the user must skateboard Jo to that place. If one of the thugs catch Jo (which are in later challenges), Jo is sent to a dungeon where the user must help her escape by placing boxes from bottom to top in the style of Tower of Hanoi. In the first level, the of boxes are four. In level 2, it 5, & in level 3, it's 7.
Upon the second visit to sabotaged site, Jo Hammet uses the items to get to the bomb without getting hurt. To disable the bomb, the user must play a decimal game where they attempt to make the number in one box equal to the number in the target box using a little android. Naturally, there are some defense androids that try to stop the user. If the user's android runs into one of the defense androids, the bomb is shown to go off, but Jo then appears on the screen and, breaking the fourth wall, informs the user that this can't happen in an educational product and the game resets.
Once the bomb has been successfully disarmed, Jo Hammet returns to the museum and gets a new crossword from B.F. Skinny, and the next mission begins.
The game concludes at Boulder Canyon Dam. Dr. X has blown up the pumping station, raising the water pressure substantially so that when he blows up the dam, the water will destroy the entire city. Jo Hammet then travels to the bomb where the user is supposed to click a small switch near Jo that will move a gate, which will divert the water away from the city. Dr. X, who is only shown in silhouette until that point, is finally seen. When arriving at the dam, the user actually has two places to click on: the switch and the dam itself. Clicking on the dam causes the water to flood and destroy the city, automatically ending the game. Though Jo Hammet saves the city, Dr. X disappears, never to be heard from again. It is possible that Dr. X was killed by the water.
It is likely that Hooverville was inspired by Boulder City, Nevada and Hoover Dam. When the names are switched, "Boulder City" becomes "Hooverville" and "Hoover Dam" becomes "Boulder Canyon Dam." Also note there is a character named Maggie Mead, after Lake Mead or possibly Margaret Mead.