JumpStart Fact Of The Day

One of the Charms that appeared in the JumpStart MMO was the T-Rex (top), the idea for which was created by a fan and made an official part of the MMO after it became one of the winning entries of a contest held on the JumpStart Blog that allowed players to submit their own ideas for Charms. When looking at the original sketch of the T-Rex submitted to the contest, there appears to be a small pink creature beside it, somewhat resembling a bird with an eggshell on its head. Whatever this was meant to be, it was never incoporated into the MMO, since the JumpStart staff only adapted the main creature design.

The soundtrack for JumpStart Adventures 4th Grade: Haunted Island was composed by Scott Lloyd Shelly, better known for his compositions for Terraria. On his website resonancearray.com, JumpStart 4th Grade shows up in his portfolio of highlighted past projects, with the description "Educational game for kids; developer wanted a Haunted House vibe, but not too scary."

In the JumpStart Academy series, Kisha is depicted as a koala, which is the species she was originally depicted as from her debut in 1995 up to 2003. Curiously, her tiger design that was used in the 3D Virtual World series and the JumpStart MMO also appears in Academy series, but is used for a different character named Tiffany.

Most of the JumpStart main cast has had a favorite food at some point over the series (though not necessarily as a prominent or recurring character trait). Below is a list of characters' favorite foods that have been stated or heavily implied in some official capacity over the years: Frankie: Dog biscuits, pizza Hopsalot: Salad, carrots Eleanor: Peanuts (specifically curried peanuts in one instance) Pierre: French fried ice cream, peanut butter sandwiches (and peanut butter in general) Kisha: Eucalyptus leaf sandwiches CJ: Prepackaged NASA dehydrated space food Casey: Warm milk Botley: A spark plug sandwich and french fried vacuum tubes

Following the Advanced series, JumpStart underwent a reboot and characters were mainly depicted in 3D afterwards. While possibly not intentional, Kisha's 3D redesign and characterization from that era could be seen as a fusion of Casey's and Kisha's traits from the Advanced series, since she is both an althetic orange cat who also likes art and painting.

On at least two occasions in the JumpStart series, frog legs have been used as example of a "gross" or "weird" food. One instance occurs in JumpStart 3rd Grade, in which the character Egbert mentions that frog legs are popular in France, which he follows with a dismissive "hmph", implying that he finds this strange or disagreeable. Another instance came from the JumpStart MMO, where a list of favorite foods included "not frog legs" as an option. Somewhat ironically, frog legs are very similar to chicken drumsticks in terms of both taste and texture, a food commonly enjoyed by many Americans, so it might've been chosen moreso for its name sounding strange rather than any qualities of the food itself.

Originally, assets for the JumpStart MMO were stored on the media.jumpstart.com website under the directory JSW3DUnity. Within this folder are several files that contain audio clips for various pop songs, such as "Big Girls Don't Cry" by Fergie, "You Belong with Me" by Taylor Swift, and "Party in the USA" by Miley Cyrus. These don't appear to have actually been used in the MMO, and while this doesn't necessarily prove that, it's worth noting that some of the songs aren't "clean" versions and contain lyrics parents might've objected to, for example, "California Gurls" by Katy Perry contains the original lyric "all that ass hangin' out".

In JumpStart 1st Grade (1995), there is a minigame which involves using a device to locate items buried in a sandbox. When viewed closely, the text "Acme DetectOMatic" (depicted in all caps) can be seen on the device (top). "Acme" is commonly used as a fictional company name in various media, particularly in various Looney Tunes shorts where many gadgets and tools display Acme branding (bottom). Presumably, the usage of the name in JumpStart 1st Grade was inspired by media such as this.

Randy Hale created soundtracks for multiple JumpStart games in the 90s, including JumpStart Adventures 3rd Grade: Mystery Mountain, JumpStart Kindergarten (1997), JumpStart 1st Grade (1999), and JumpStart Reading for Second Graders, amongst others. He mainly composed background music for these games, though in multiple instances he composed vocal songs as well.

In JumpStart 3D Virtual World kindergarten, Kisha can sometimes enter an idle animation where, upon stopping, she seemingly freezes in a pose rather than returning to her normal state. Whether this is some kind of bug or not is unclear.

JumpStart 1st Grade (1995) mostly features a relatively simple cartoon art style. However, the Serving Up Fractions minigame features extremely realistic graphics for several foods, which appear to be actual photos. This is the only instance in the entire game where such realistic imagery is used.

(Top screenshot is from gameplay footage by chantolove on YouTube)

Lawrence Marvit created some concept paintings for JumpStart Adventures 5th Grade: Jo Hammet, Kid Detective. The paintings differ from the final game in some ways, such as depicting characters not seen in the game, which were perhaps stand-ins for the game's eventual protagonist. However, many aspects of the paintings influenced the game's art style, such as the use of highly contrasting colors and frequent slanted lines.

JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade contains a reading comprehension minigame in which the player must read a story and then make sentences summarizing it. One of the stories, Mr. Popularity, will occasionally present a set of words meant to create the sentence "Frankie is popular", but can optionally be used to create the sentence "Godzilla is popular", due to Godzilla being included in the word choices. (The game will not accept this as a correct answer.)

A small detail of Eleanor's 3D models from around the JumpStart 3D Virtual World series onwards is that she has faint freckles, which are usually not noticeable from a distance due to being colored similar to her skin, but are more visible from close up, as seen in the top two images here. They are not included in 2D artwork of Eleanor from this era, as seen in the bottom two images.

In the JumpStart MMO, player profiles had a "Favorites" section, where players could specify their favorite color, food, music, animal, movie type, and sport. For the favorite food category, several options were "not (something)". This set includes "not anchovies", "not cow tongue", "not fried Twinkies", "not frog legs", "not liver", "not sauerkraut", "not toe jam", and "not vegetables".

Hopsalot and CJ are somewhat unique in that they were portrayed as adults in earlier media, but were retconned to be kids later on. Hopsalot was originally called "Mr. Hopsalot" and was depicted as a schoolteacher in the 90s, and CJ was an uncle to several much younger nieces and nephews in the early 2000s. However, both of them ended up being aged down to be in the same age range as characters like Kisha and Pierre, starting in 2000 (for Hopsalot) and 2005 (for CJ).