JumpStart 2nd Grade

JumpStart 2nd Grade is a game in the JumpStart series released in 1996. The game centers around the duo of CJ and Edison exploring a schoolhouse full of adventure. The challenges that await in the school include crossing ravines of alligators, finding the remnants of ancient pirate ship, and even fighting aliens in outer space. These adventures culminate with the arguably less exciting goal of collecting postage stamps.

Unused Graphics#

Early Background Designs#

There are various early drafts for backgrounds for both locations and minigames.

Early	Final

There's an early design for the Fish Tank background, which is actually very close to final version. The main difference is that the early design has outlines (a trait shared by many other early graphics), while the final game uses a lineless art style for most graphics,

Early	Final

Aside from the shift to a lineless art style, the Boiler Room also moved and changed various structures and objects. The back wall became smaller, a door was added beneath the stairs, the locker was moved closer to the boiler, and the right wall was changed to resemble the recyling minigame more. There was also some kind of brown spot or hole on the floor in the early design that ended up being completely removed.

Early	Final

An early background for the Treasure Tree minigame notably features a prototype character design for Edison the firefly. He is depicted with only had a hat and shoes, his face is much simpler with huge round eyes and no eyebrows, his wings are smaller, and his legs appear to be much shorter. The rest of the background shows that the screen became flipped at some point, so that Edison and the tree branch would be on the left side of the screen rather than the right.

Early	Final

An early background for the Lookout minigame features a variety of differences, the most noticeable of which is a huge telescope which was changed to a ramp used to launch a rocket in the final game. The hanging planets were moved to the left corner of the screen, and an electronic screen showing the solar system was added to the right side of the screen.

Early	Final

An early background for the Cricket Band background is missing various buttons. In the final version, the piano's design was slightly modified (mainly at the edges), a can was added off to the right, and the treble clef on the music staff was made bolder.

Early (Version 1)	Early (Version 2)	Final

There are two early versions of the Easel. In the first version, all of the text styles for the Sticker, Sticker Book, and Great Works books are different from the final game, and the book that has Sketch Book on it was changed to My Work. This one also lacks the eraser from the final game, and the shading in the back is slightly different as well. The second early version resembles the final game for the most part, but features an extreme closeup of CJ that isn't unused anywhere in the final game.

Early (Version 1)	Early (Version 2)	Final

There are two early versions of the cave that leads to the football field which are completely different from the final background and feature some stacked boxes on top of a mattress. The first version has outlines, and the second is lineless and also has the text FOOTBALL added to the arrow sign.

Early	Final

A very rough sketch of the Football Field depicts only the basic layout for the minigame. A bit ironically, the titular football field shrunk to occupy only a tiny portion of the screen in the final game.

Early	Final

An early background for the Log Ride minigame depicts four cave entrances, but with a completely different appearance from the final game.

Early	Final

An early version of the map of the United States features much thinner lines, and is missing Alaska and Hawaii. It also features a Mail button, which was removed in the final game.

Early	Final

An early version of a pen pal letter uses rough placeholder graphics, all of which ended up being changed. An interesting detail about the early version is that instead of starting the letter with 'Dear Pen Pal', it only says 'Dear' with the rest of the line blank. This could possibly indicate that the player's name was originally meant to be displayed on the letter after 'Dear'. If so, this was changed presumably because the pen pal letters are voiced in the final game, and this game wouldn't have the means for accounting for unqiue player names in spoken dialogue. The early version also includes a Reply button, which is completely absent in the final game.

Miscellaneous#

A background depicting a typewriter. Presumably, this was originally going to be used in place of the computer that appears in the final game, which allows the player to type and print out a message.

An unfinished background depicting the surface of the moon. It would've been intended for the Lookout minigame, but the moon isn't a location that the player can visit in the final game.

A background showing the elevator buttons close up. In the game, the elevator buttons are only ever visible from a distance, and they have different appearances as well.

An unfinished background depicting the school's mailbox. Although the final game involves the player looking inside of the mailbox to find the sign-in sheet, a completely different background is used in that scene.

An unused closeup of Idaho (and a few neighboring states) on the United States map, possibly indicating that there were meant to be closeups of each state when viewing the map. This is seemingly the only closeup that exists in the game files, so this concept might've been scrapped fairly early.

References#