JumpStart Adventures 5th Grade: Jo Hammet, Kid Detective
| 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 |
| 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]
Subjects
- Art History
- Geography
- Math
- Parts of Speech
- Science
- US History
Characters
Jo Hammet
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.
Dr. X
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.
Course of a Mission
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.
The Hooverville Museum of Art and Geography
When Jo Hammet was on a field trip with her class, she literally bumped into a man named Martin, who was then carried away by a bunch of thugs. However, he left a mysterious pair of opaque glasses behind. Later, a talking rat named B.F. Skinny shows up with a crossword. The crossword asks various questions relating to art and geography. The player must then 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.
First Visit to the Sabotaged Site
The crossword reveals the address of a place that has been sabotaged. Upon arrival, the player must pick the lock by solving a math puzzle in order to open it. On the first mission, Martin explains that the glasses can be used to read the minds of the thugs. The player then plays a grammar game where they find the correct part of speech to go into the thugs' dialog. Their thoughts reveal the way to get to a bomb planted in each of the sabotaged locations.
Searching for Items
After decoding the thugs' thoughts, Jo must visit three locations in order to obtain three items she needs to grab the bomb safely.
The Squishy Juice Bar
The person serving the drinks in this location is an undercover reporter named Bernie, whom Jo seems to be acquainted with. Bernie will give Jo Hammet one of the things she needs to get to the bomb if she helps him make drinks for patrons. In this game, the player is given several recipes for drinks in succession. Each recipe calls for a different quantity of various juices, as well as several measuring containers that each can hold a certain fractional amount. The player must measure out the correct fraction of the required juice in order to successfully complete the beverage. On levels 2 and 3, the player must also help serve the drinks.
Jimmy's Junkyard
Jimmy is a recluse who runs a local junkyard. In exchange for the item Jo needs, the player must play a tangram game, where he/she must move and rotate pieces of junk until it matches a given diagram.
Boulder Canyon Mine Shaft
At the Boulder Canyon Mine Shaft, a park ranger named Maggie Mead needs three items retrieved from the mine shaft. 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. The player controls Jo as she moves around the mine's three levels to find the three items Maggie has requested. The player must move carefully as falling rocks can hinder Jo's progress. If Jo is battered around too much by the rocks, her health will decline and the player will have to start over.
The Dungeon
Sometimes before going to a location, Jo must skateboard to that place if the location is too far from her current position. Sometimes, one of the thugs will attempt to capture Jo. If they capture her, Jo is sent to a dungeon where the player must help her escape by placing boxes from bottom to top in the style of Tower of Hanoi. The number of boxes the player must stack varies depending on the difficulty level.
Second Visit to the Sabotaged Site
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 player 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. Players must maneuver carefully to avoid running into defense androids that can immediately set the bomb off should a defense android touch the player's android. If the bomb goes off, Jo appears on the screen and, breaking the fourth wall, informs the player 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's conclusion
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. Though Jo Hammet saves the city, Dr. X disappears, never to be heard from again. It is possible that either Dr. X was killed by the water or he made an unseen getaway.